


Loyal Knight and True

by rainbowninja167



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Bisexuality, Dubcon References (see story notes), Everyone's a Poet, Flagrant misreadings of poets who are dead and therefore can't defend themselves, Magical Realism AU, Unreliable Narrator, love spells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-03 22:30:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 51,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14579004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowninja167/pseuds/rainbowninja167
Summary: Harry Styles falls in love on a Tuesday afternoon, and it is everything he’d always imagined it would be. The man is perched on a low stone wall that divides the road from the river, his chin resting on his knees and his brown hair fluffing lightly in the wind. There’s a small notebook on the wall beside him, open to a page as though he’s only just put it down. A ray of sunshine hits his face, giving it a golden glow, and as Harry watches, the man closes his eyes, tips his face toward the sky, and smiles.Oh,Harry thinks, mouth open on a silent gasp.This is how it happens.In contemporary Oxford, Harry Styles and Niall Horan run a magical bookshop, unbowed by an entire academic establishment that insists magic doesn't even exist. Sometimes, Harry finds, it's much easier to have faith in magic than in himself. Louis Tomlinson is a classically trained poet who needs something to believe in, and Liam Payne longs to be a part of something magical.But when the lines between reality and fiction - poetry and magic - start to blur, can they trust each other to keep track of what's true?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This might be the strangest thing I've ever written, and probably the hardest, but I've put a lot of myself into it, and I'm thrilled for people to read it. I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> The story draws a lot on things from literary history; take out the magic (which I've obviously imagined), and you'll find that most details have a grain of truth in them. If you're curious about any of it, come chat with me on [tumblr](http://rainbowninja.tumblr.com), I got super obsessed with some of the minutia of this story, and will be _more than thrilled_ to talk about it. More. Than. Thrilled.
> 
> There's an OC in this fic who's nonbinary and who goes by they/them pronouns throughout the fic. I'm a cis woman, and if I've screwed anything up regarding this character, I'd be really grateful to know, so I can learn to do better.
> 
> I want to briefly touch on the dubcon tag I have above: In this fic, to the best of my ability to write it, everything romantic or sexual that happens between characters is _fully consensual and done with free will_. This fic does deal with love spells. Characters consider the question of how much a spell can affect you, before it impairs your ability to consent. And they also question whether other characters' decision-making has been altered by a potential love spell. In short, they're all super freaked out and trying their best, but again, it's something that gets discussed and worried over. Please be safe when deciding whether to read this, and if you have any other questions about this aspect of the fic, please don't hesitate to send an ask or a message on [tumblr](http://rainbowninja.tumblr.com).
> 
> Lastly! I really want to thank [belialsmiracles](http://belialsmiracles.tumblr.com) who created such stunning art for this story (check them out, at the tops of Chapters 1 and 2). Also the larryladies Slack channel (they know who they are) for the beta-ing, brainstorming, and tireless encouragement, and arboreal_overlords for the help with Oxford geography (any other mistakes are mine). Lastly, than you so much to the mods of this fest, who've been amazing, and were super kind when I asked for a desperate, last-minute extension.
> 
> You can also find the post for this fic (including both drawings!) [here](http://rainbowninja.tumblr.com/post/173695918360/loyal-knight-and-true-harrylouis-51k-fic-by)

 

_Willows whiten, aspens quiver,_  
_Little breezes dusk and shiver_  
_Thro’ the wave that runs for ever_  
_By the island in the river_  
_Flowing down to Camelot._  
_Four gray walls, and four gray towers,_  
_Overlook a space of flowers,_  
_And the silent isle imbowers  
_ _The Lady of Shalott._

 

Harry Styles falls in love on a Tuesday afternoon, and it is everything he’d always imagined it would be.

It all starts with a shortcut, as any momentous event should. It’s a sunny day, one of the first solidly nice days of the year, and Oxford’s many students are out in force enjoying the weather. Harry doesn’t feel any desire to push through the crowds of teenagers on the pavement, so just after he crosses Magdalen Bridge, he detours down toward the river instead.

And that’s when he sees the man. The man is perched on a low stone wall that divides the road from the river, his chin resting on his knees and his brown hair fluffing lightly in the wind. There’s a small notebook on the wall beside him, open to a page as though he’s only just put it down. A ray of sunshine hits his face, giving it a golden glow, and as Harry watches, the man closes his eyes, tips his face toward the sky, and smiles.

_Oh_ , Harry thinks, mouth open on a silent gasp. _This is how it happens_.

***

Harry doesn’t actually talk to the man, nor does he pause on the path for any longer than a double-take and a stumble, but the sight of him stays clear in Harry’s memory all the way back to his and Niall’s bookshop, like an afterimage created from the same sun that had illuminated the man’s lithe figure.

Harry crashes into the Grimoire, breathless with the not-quite-meeting, and announces “I’ve just seen my soul-mate” to the shop at large. For a moment, it seems that only the rows of books will bear witness to his life-changing news. The space behind the counter is empty, and Harry can’t see a single patron browsing the narrow aisles, or searching through the bins of used books that line the front of the shop.

But then Niall pokes his head up over a stack of books that’s barricading one of the aisles. These sorts of edifices tend to appear whenever Harry leaves Niall alone in the shop for too long, as if Niall has Elsa-like powers to build castles out of paper. He’s blinking owlishly out at Harry from behind the barricade now like a particularly scholarly extra in _Les Misérables_.

“What’re you…” Harry gestures at Niall’s fortress, and assumes that the rest of the question is implied.

“Tracking down a source on Emily Brontë’s poetry,” Niall mumbles, dust bunnies fluffing languidly around his head. “Remy just laughs when I say she was a Spiritualist, but I know I read somewhere that she was experimenting with verse forms to combat illness.”

Harry blinks and tilts his head, contemplating the possibility. Harry knows full-well that the history of English literature is filled with Spiritualists – people who write poetry that doubles as magical spells – even when conventional history prefers not to acknowledge them. He’d studied the Brontës in school, and nobody had ever mentioned they might be Spiritualists, but Harry has stopped finding that surprising.

“Makes sense,” he offers. “The Brontës were four siblings, right? So they could’ve easily formed a Writing Circle, even shut away together in that house in Yorkshire.”

Magical poetry only works properly when it’s cast by a Writing Circle, which is always a group of four poets who have trained to safely channel the magical energy that poetry unleashes.

Harry imagines that the Brontës might’ve grown up a bit like he had, in a small town where the skeptical modernity of London, Oxford, and Cambridge only made its way in bits and pieces, and where his older sister Gemma had been the height of cool for getting accepted into a Writer’s Circle before she’d even left secondary school.

“That’s what I said!” Niall exclaims, shaking a large, heavy-looking book for emphasis. “And then Remy asked _why it mattered_. They said, ‘well, Niall—’” Niall does a startlingly accurate Remy impression, from the slight lilt of a French accent that Remy picked up from their Algerian parents (but only really comes out when they’re annoyed), right down to the way Remy tips their chin when they’re trying to be patient (usually with Niall). “—‘well, Niall, it’s not like anyone else will be able to cast the Brontë’s spells. Only the poet’s own Writing Circle can cast their spells. To the rest of us, they may as well be regular poems. _You_ know that.’” Niall waves the book again, so violently that he nearly topples into his own barricade. “Like I’m an idiot who’s never learned the Fundamental Laws of Magic. As if _history for history’s sake_ isn’t good enough!”

Harry privately agrees with Remy more than he’ll ever admit to Niall. Remy is the third member of their Writing Circle – along with an Oxford undergraduate named Margaret who’d only joined a few months ago – and has a very pragmatic attitude toward magic. Remy is a solicitor at a LGBTQ advocacy firm in town, and they’re used to thinking in terms of _is_ and _might be_. It makes them a good Spiritualist. The difference between a spell’s success or failure often depends on how clear-eyed a poet is about their own magic. But it also makes Remy very good at winding up Niall, who finds it inconceivable that _anyone_ could find magical history boring or irrelevant in any way.

“So, like. To clarify…” Harry starts. “You turned our place of business into a serial killer-style murderboard just to prove something to Remy, who’s already admitted they don’t care either way?”

Harry blinks innocently while Niall scowls back. He throws the heavy book at Harry, who just barely manages to catch it without flying into the far wall. When he turns the book over in his hands, he realizes it’s _A Guide to Magical Practice_ , the best and most popular textbook for writing Spiritualist poetry. Harry himself has a copy in his own flat, gifted to him by Gemma when he’d left for Oxford.

“It’s not about Remy,” Niall lies shamelessly. “I just want to know. Just look through that book for any Brontë references, yeah? I’m trying to remember where I saw it.”

Harry sighs, but he obligingly settles on the floor amidst Niall’s book piles and turns to the chapter of the _Guide_ that gives an overview of magical history, focusing in on the section about the nineteenth century. Disappointingly, this chapter only surveys the most basic historical information, all of which Harry has read many times before:

_Until the early 19 th century, magical writer’s groups in Britain had practiced freely. Popular attitudes toward magic and poetry began to shift in 1816, after an impromptu writer’s group formed in Geneva by Mary Shelley, her husband Percy, Lord Byron, and John Polidori. Mary Shelley emerged from the collaboration with the manuscript for _Frankenstein _, a novel that fascinated and troubled the English reading public in equal measure. Shelley rushed to reassure readers in the preface to her second edition that, since_ Frankenstein _was a work of prose rather than poetry, it could only deal metaphorically with themes of magic and creation, and was not actually magic itself. Nevertheless, titillated readers continued to whisper that Shelley’s novel had the power to bring Frankenstein’s monster to life, and that the Creature had been smuggled out of the villa in the dead of night by Lord Byron. To give the English reading public its due, if the accidental conjuration of a magical monster had taken place, Lord Byron would be the obvious choice to dispose of it. But to this day, literary tourists still travel to Lake Geneva hoping for a glimpse of Shelley’s infamous Creature._

_The backlash to_ Frankenstein _was slow, but destined to be long-lasting. A new school of poets emerged, calling themselves Classicals, who had the stated goal of rescuing poetry from the realms of superstition, collaboration, and feminine hysteria that it had fallen into. Magical poets were branded “spiritualists,” a name that has stuck to this day, and were ridiculed in the English press until most either relinquished their beliefs or began practicing them in secret. Classical poetry, in contrast, continued to dominate literary criticism and university departments until the 1980s, when magical historians began a process of reconstructing and reclaiming the history of Spiritualist poetry. The question of whether, for example, Tennyson had belonged to a writer’s group -- or merely invited friends to stay in his remote country home in convenient groups of four – has dominated the editorial pages of_ The Telegraph _and the halls of university English departments in equal measure._

“These all seem pretty useless,” Harry notes, after a quick scan of the rest of the books in the pile nearest to his left foot. Niall makes an outraged noise at the presumption that _any_ book in the Grimoire’s collection could be termed “useless.” When Harry shows him the covers, in a silent challenge, Niall only says serenely: “I gave you the easy ones. Unless you want to speed-read this detailed treatise on magical morphology?”

Which, Harry admits, is an extremely compelling argument, and he returns to his stack without further protest.

They spend a half-hour looking through books for Brontë references, during which time no customers appear in the Grimoire to disturb them, before Niall breaks their comfortable silence. He’s holding his current book up close to his face – he badly needs glasses, but is conducting an ongoing charade that he doesn’t – and his voice sounds slightly muffled from behind it.

“What were you saying when you first came in? You met someone?”

“My soul-mate,” Harry corrects automatically, and then frowns down at his lap. When Harry had seen the man by the river, he’d been completely certain that nothing in his life could ever be the same again. But here he is, caught up in another of Niall’s literary treasure hunts like it’s any other day.

Niall actually lowers his book -- something about psychology and iambic pentameter -- to look searchingly into Harry’s face.

“Haz,” Niall begins, almost warily, “You know soul-mates aren’t a thing, right? We can’t do _that_ kind of magic.”

“I know,” Harry says quickly. “I didn’t mean it _literally_. Of course.”

“Aright, well…good,” Niall retorts, and raises his book again. Harry blinks. He’d been prepared for Niall to laugh, but he hadn’t been at all prepared for thorough disinterest. Harry hesitates, hovering around Niall’s peripheral vision while trying to appear like he’s doing no such thing.

The pages of Niall’s book rustle a bit, as though they’re laughing, before he puts it down entirely.

“Go on, then. I know you’re dying to talk about it,” Niall says with a grin, and Harry shoves at his shoulder to hide his relief.

“I saw him on the river path near the Botanic Garden,” Harry begins, and Niall’s expression, which had been wreathed in a sort of fond indulgence, promptly sharpens again. Harry can tell Niall is being uncharacteristically cautious when he just says, “What happened next?”

“Nothing!” Harry retorts happily, too caught up in the memory of the man’s hands, his _smile_ , to care about whatever Niall is thinking. “It was perfect,” he concludes with a sigh.

Niall looks, if possible, even more alarmed. “Well…what did he say when you talked to him? What’s his name?”

Harry shrugs and, seeing the way Niall is staring at him, tries to explain.

“Look, I know it sounds a bit mad, it’s just…you didn’t see him, Ni. It was like a moment in a film, or like…” Harry struggles for a bit, before remembering where, exactly, he’s currently sitting. Ignoring Niall’s sharp noise of confusion, Harry darts away, back through the shelves of the bookshop to the Fiction section. He’s returned to the front of the shop in an instant, holding a copy of the novel _Middlemarch_ and already flipping to the proper page.

“When Will and his friend first meet Dorothea in Rome,” Harry struggles to explain, a little breathlessly, “They see her standing by a sculpture of Ariadne, looking dreamily at the sunlight on the marble, and Will’s friend knows immediately that he wants to paint her. He says she’s like ‘sensuous force controlled by spiritual passion--’” Harry points insistently to the passage in the book. “That was it. How I felt.”

“Okay…” Niall says slowly, and at least now he’s transferred his frown from Harry’s face to the book in his hands. Harry struggles to conceal his disappointment. He knows Niall is neither a novel-reader nor a romantic, but he’s already starting to doubt his own recollection of the moment by the river, and he wishes selfishly that his best friend would just affirm it all for him.

Niall, predictably, does not. Instead he sighs, shakes his head a bit, and says: “I think I need a break from this Brontë thing. C’mon, Harry.”

He starts to drag Harry out the door. Harry makes a wordless sound of protest and gestures a bit helplessly around at the shop _they both own_.

“I’ve been sat here for hours and nobody’s even looked in the window. Besides, this is an emergency,” Niall says, already busy scribbling a sign for the door.

Harry’s not entirely sure what to expect, given that rather grim pronouncement, but it’s certainly not to be hauled several doors down to Rivendell, a fantasy/sci-fi bookshop that Niall has frequently declared to be an existential threat to the Grimoire and everything it stands for.

“It’s just that you haven’t even dated a man before, and you’re already convinced he’s your one true love? I dunno Haz,” Niall murmurs absently as he rifles through a book display. “Huh, _of course_ he’s got the Harry Potter Illustrated Editions in stock.”

Harry privately thinks the illustrations in those books are rather nice, but he knows better than to break ranks during one of their frequent reconnaisance trips into what Niall calls “enemy territory.” He also knows better than to question whether this conversation does indeed rise to the level of “an emergency.” In some ways, he understands Niall’s impulse to put a stack of £100 hardbacks between himself and emotions.

“‘S not true, I dated loads of men in uni.” Harry pensively flips through the newest _Ms. Marvel_ issue. He’d been meaning to read it, but if he ever bought so much as a bookmark from Rivendell, Niall would literally disown him.

“Hazza, mate, _nothing_ you did in uni could justly be called dating. As the roommate with the wall adjoining your bedroom, I can tell you in _excruciating_ detail exactly what you _did_ do, but none of it ever constituted a _date_.”

Niall, with a level of pettiness that Harry deeply admires even if he’ll never admit it, darts a quick glance around Rivendell before rearranging the shelf of graphic novels until they’re all out of alphabetical order.

“Mark Ewing took me to coffee,” Harry says, in what even _he_ can admit doesn’t make the most convincing rebuttal. Meanwhile, he does his part for The Cause by deliberately mis-shelving the _Ms. Marvel_ issue amongst a DC Comics display. “And it’s not like I was only _looking_ for a shag. When I met them, I always liked them. It just never felt _right_.”

Harry shrugs, biting his lip, and Niall shoots him a look out of the corner of his eye that might even be apologetic.

“You’ve spent the last several years telling me _nobody_ felt right to date long-term, and I’ve left it alone—”

“They didn’t. Then. I hadn’t met my soul-mate yet.” Harry rolls his eyes. He doesn’t see why this is so difficult for Niall to understand.

“ _You haven’t met him now_.” Niall actually throws up his hands in a caricature of frustration. “Harry—”

But then his eyes widen in alarm, and Harry turns to see a familiar figure barreling towards them.

“Shit! Hide!” Niall hisses, and drags Harry behind a _Doctor Who_ display. Unfortunately for their pride, this TARDIS is not bigger on the inside, and therefore does a very poor job of concealing either of them. A fact that’s confirmed by a rather irritated voice saying: “I know you’re there, Horan.”

This is so obviously true that, despite Niall’s grip on his jumper and muttered recriminations, Harry pokes his head out from around a Dalek.

“Hullo, Liam!” he tries brightly. Liam Payne is not impressed. Harry’s not sure Liam Payne has ever been impressed by Harry, which, now that Harry considers it, might be due to his and Niall’s tendency to sneak into his shop every fortnight and sabotage his merchandise. Despite that – or perhaps because of it – Harry likes Liam quite a bit. He’d only opened Rivendell a couple years ago, when most bookshop owners were clever enough to get out of the retail game, and despite Niall’s insistence upon treating the Grimoire and Rivendell like they’re two sides of a football rivalry, when they’d gone to a bookseller’s event and found Liam looking lost and overwhelmed at the hotel bar, Niall and Harry had both dutifully pretended they _hadn’t_ been caught defacing a _Game of Thrones_ poster just that past Thursday, and had bought him a drink.

“I still don’t understand what you have against _fantasy_ ,” Liam is saying, already red in the face. “Everyone likes fantasy! It’s fantastic!” He points, a little desperately, to the sign above the store till, which does indeed announce exactly that.

“It’s great,” Harry is agreeing, just as Niall insists “It’s propaganda!” from behind a cardboard cutout of Peter Capaldi.

“It’s _what_?”

“…and misinformation,” Niall adds, emerging from behind the display at last. “Makes everyone think magic is all _Expelliarmus_ and hidden wardrobes. Of course nobody would believe in _that_.”

Liam gets an odd, shifty look on his face. Harry glances around the lovingly decorated bookshop they’re currently standing in, and wonders if perhaps it’s best to change the subject.

But Liam beats him to it. “Well, I’m sure you’ve destroyed everything you came here for. Is that all you wanted? Or is it too much to ask for you to actually _buy_ something.”

Harry blinks. Usually Liam allows this whole cat-and-mouse production to go on for much longer. Harry privately suspects he enjoys it as much as they do. But now, he’s chivvying them towards the exit so unsubtly that Harry is instantly concerned.

“Alright, Liam?” he tries, which seems to be a hard enough knock against Liam’s self-control for the entire dam to burst.

“Something’s gone wrong with my latest order. It’s all mislabelled and it’s going to take _hours_ of work to put right--”

Harry knows for a fact that a mislabelled book shipment is a minor annoyance at best, but Liam has the worst luck in hiring employees. Every one of them sins to new lows of unreliability, petty theft, or just general creepiness. And because of this, Liam always seems to be running the shop single-handedly, on nothing but caffeine and anxiety, so Harry supposes he’s entitled to a good panic every now and then. It does make Harry feel a bit terrible about the graphic novel misshelving scheme, though.

“D’you…need any help?” Harry’s guilt compels him to ask. Niall shoots him a scathing look.

“Really? You would?” Liam sounds both shocked and delighted by the offer.

“I don’t think Niall’s got anything on this afternoon,” Harry says blithely, and enjoys the abrupt transformation of Niall’s expression, from one of pity to the deepest dismay.

Harry’s not a _saint_.

Liam makes a funny squeaking noise and moves to hug Niall, but Niall skirts around it like a frightened rabbit.

“This’ll just give me a better chance to infiltrate your corrupt operation,” Niall warns in a last-ditch attempt to escape, but Liam seems so happy to have any help at all, that Niall’s threats don’t bother him.

“As long as you infiltrate it _competently_ ,” he says, and steers Niall towards the back of the shop before Niall has a chance to come up with a better excuse.

Harry waits for Niall and Liam’s backs to be turned, before guiltily re-alphabetizing the shelf he and Niall had been sabotaging earlier. It just would have bothered him for hours, if he’d left it.

When Harry returns to the Grimoire, he takes a look around the empty, silent shop, and decides to shelve some of their new inventory. He had promised Niall he’d finish it before their Writing Circle meeting that evening. They’ve gotten new shipments of magical history books in, as well as a collection of self-help books that he’s almost certain Margaret had ordered for them as a joke. There are also several boxes of novels, which Harry leaves to the end, as he always does.

The Grimoire has narrow aisles that never lead exactly where you think they will, windows that never seem to let the light all the way through, and dust that accumulates faster than Harry can clean it. This last, he blames on Niall. Just on principle. The shop may be small and shabby, but it’s also the closest thing to home that Harry has, and he knows Niall feels the same. Even both their flats look like bookshop annexes rather than separate residences.

There’s also no doubt that certain sections of the shop are more Niall’s, and some are more Harry’s. The section of the Grimoire that houses most of their novels is in the back left corner, and also contains a spiral staircase leading up to a reading loft, which was highly impractical given the space it’d had to be wedged into, but which Harry had bullied Niall into helping him build when they’d inherited the Grimoire from their former mentor, Kathleen, because Harry had flatly refused to own a bookstore that didn’t look at least a bit like the library from _Beauty and the Beast_. Harry does a quick check of the reading loft now – everything seems to be in order, its collection of pillows and a fat brown armchair and a rickety chaise longue all intact – before beginning to shelve the new books in earnest.

Niall’s influence is all over the sections closest to the front of the shop, which house magical philosophy and history. Many of those books are newer, since until very recently, anything to do with magic was passed down orally, through Writer’s Circles taking in new members, just as Kathleen had taken in Harry and Niall. Except for brief appearances in the sillier periodicals of the nineteenth century, magic hadn’t been considered a legitimate topic of study. But it’s Niall’s passion. So much so, that Harry reckons their dusty little shop probably has a more complete collection of magical texts than either the Bodleian or the British Library, even if nobody but Niall can ever find any specific book in the mess he’s always making of the section. And the newness of the books somehow suit Niall too, positioned as they are by the front of the shop to show their vibrant, glossy covers off to best effect.

Harry sometimes wonders what people think his own favorite section reveals about him.

The shop this afternoon has that sleepy, hushed quality to it that Harry usually likes best, when the books seem to be soaking up both ambient sound and light, as if they’re drawing power from it. Harry knows that’s nonsense. He knows better than anyone that magic has certain specific rules, and semi-sentient photosynthesizing novels aren’t included. Books aren’t magical objects, despite the spells that are sometimes contained within them. But sometimes, in the hush of the book collection that he and Niall own, when he thinks of the _enormity_ of it, of all the people who’ve ever read the books stored here, Harry finds it especially difficult to draw the distinction between magical words and ordinary ones.

He takes his time shelving the novels, as he always does, stopping by particularly well-loved titles to let his fingers trail along their spines. It’s a comforting ritual, as if the books themselves are talismans, as if Harry is drawing some of the sunny lifeforce the books have consumed back out of them, trusting that they will one day guide him toward his own Elizabeth Bennet or Mr Rochester.

There’s something different about his rituals today, however. Harry thinks of his man by the river, and he has to believe that at last, his books have guided him closer to where he’s meant to go.

Harry’s almost finished the shelving, still lost in thought, when a slight cough from the front of the shop disturbs its sleepy quiet Harry rounds a corner to find a slight, awkward-looking man hovering by the till. He’s wearing a suit that’s just a bit too big for him, wire-rimmed eyeglasses, and a nervous expression. His eyes widen when he sees Harry, like he wasn’t expecting him and doesn’t quite know what to make of him.

“I’m looking for Niall Horan,” he says, in a clipped tone.

“Er, he’s out,” Harry offers. He’s used to any number of odd individuals appearing in the shop in search of Niall, but something about the way this man’s eyes are darting around the shop is putting Harry on edge. “But I can tell him you stopped by, Mr…”

The man hesitates and peers at Harry once more before evidently deciding to reveal: “Addison. Arthur Addison. Look, it’s essential that I speak with Mr. Horan right away. Can you ask him to stop by my hotel tonight? I was going to leave the address.” There’s a small notebook in his hand, and as Harry watches, the man glances over whatever he’s already written before tearing out the page messily.

“It’s absolutely urgent that I see him as soon as possible,” Arthur Addison insists again, before handing the paper to Harry. Harry notices idly that it has fragments of other notes on it already, like Addison had reused a piece of scrap paper he’d already written on, but he supposes that if the notes had been important, Mr. Addison would have used a different page.

“Er, sure?”

Mr Addison is still frowning, as though he doubts Harry’s trustworthiness to convey the message. He hesitates for another few seconds before finally, with one more hunted look around the shop, the mysterious Arthur Addison leaves.

Harry shakes his head at the self-importance of antiquarians. Whatever he wants to discuss with Niall is probably two hundred years old. How urgent can it really be?

When Niall returns a bit later, he just furrows his brow at the message, and the note that Harry dutifully passes along, before resuming his Brontë research. Harry takes that as his cue to forget about the strange encounter, and to return to his shelving.

He’s just sliding the last of the new books into its proper place when Margaret slips into his aisle.

“I’ve only been calling your name for _hours_ ,” Margaret huffs, crossing her arms. “Remy is here and Niall’s closing the shop. Are you ready?”

“Yeah, alright,” Harry says, pushing himself away from the shelf he’d been working on. Margaret darts over to throw a friendly arm around his shoulders and drag him bodily through the bookshop, urging him to move faster. Harry has only known Margaret for a few months, since she arrived at Oxford as a first-year literature student and tumbled into both their bookshop and their writer’s group with an absent-minded cheerfulness that Harry has come to realize is utterly characteristic of Margaret’s approach to the universe. In that time, he’s also realized the futility of protesting any of her affectionate manhandling.

“Why do you look like Hermione Granger?”

Margaret’s style always tends toward the bookish, but today she’s gone for a cardigan-and-skirt combination, conjured up chunky black glasses from somewhere – stolen from Remy, Harry strongly suspects – and has pushed her curly black hair away from her face with a scarlet headband that shows off brilliantly against her warm brown skin. The only thing needed to complete the picture is a Gryffindor tie and the dimming of Margaret’s overwhelming natural Hufflepuffitude.

“Piss off,” Margaret says, no real bite to it. “I had a meeting with my tutor this afternoon. I was going for serious and scholarly, with a side of ‘definitely not fucking around with magic on the weekend.’”

“Reckon it worked?” Harry asks, no longer entirely teasing. Margaret doesn’t let much slip about her tutor, which would itself be a sign that she’s unhappy with him, even if all her jokes about school didn’t end with the same type of punchline. Harry can’t help but wonder how bad it’s gotten before Margaret was willing to say, even obliquely, that her tutor doesn’t take her work seriously.

“Mm.” Margaret shrugs, but Harry doesn’t miss the way she purses her lips before her expression smooths back into something more neutral. Harry takes this as a cue to hug her shoulder just a bit tighter. They turn the corner into the bookshop proper and come upon the familiar sight and sound of Niall and Remy bickering.

“I’m just _saying_ , there are clear references in Charlotte Brontë’s letters to her schoolfriend--” Niall’s face is flushed and splotchy with annoyance as he brandishes a book at Remy. He must have finally found the citation he was looking for.

“…And _I’m_ saying, they could have been the most powerful Circle of 1846 and it still doesn’t make a bloody bit of difference in 2018--” Remy shakes their head sharply, tight brown curls shuddering with the force of the motion.

Niall and Remy have clearly been at it for a while. Years, in point of fact, with no discernable progress on either side. And yet, they both had the uncanny ability to start the same thread right back up again, as though no time has passed. Even if, in reality, they do sometimes manage to go days, or even weeks, without rehashing the same arguments about magical history. Sometimes Harry thinks that any moment they _aren’t_ arguing with each other is only a regrettable detour in the timeline of their own, private little universe.

“Spare me one more word about the bloody Brontës,” Margaret whispers to Harry, before shooting Niall and Remy a hunted look, as though they might somehow hear her from across the room. Unlikely, considering Niall is currently intoning something very dire about “history doomed to repeat” and Remy is throwing their hands in the air and calling Niall something in Arabic that Harry can’t translate but is pretty sure is extremely rude. Remy speaks both French and Arabic fluently, and seems to take great joy in using their multilingualism _specifically_ to insult Niall in languages he can’t understand.

“Emily Brontë could come back from the grave to dance on that John Green display, and neither of them would notice,” Harry murmurs to a giggling Margaret.

“I own a _bookshop_ ,” Niall is arguing when they both check back in. “I don’t know what you _expect--_ ”

“Yes, well, everyone has their flaws,” Remy retorts cheerfully, and gives Niall such a bland look that he’s brought up short. He blinks, and then suddenly he’s laughing, shaking his head slightly even as he sets the Brontë book down and, if Harry’s any judge, instantly forgets about the whole issue.

“One day,” Niall warns, “you’ll be grateful to have a friend who knows his history.” Remy just shakes their head, but there’s an answering twich to their lips as they call: “Alright you two, you can stop cowering in the Cookbook section now.”

“ _Cowering_ ,” Margaret scoffs, dragging Harry further into the shop, where four folding chairs have been arranged into a loose circle.

They meet every week, in this same time and place, just as Harry has been doing since he first moved to Oxford, although neither Margaret nor Remy had been part of the group at that time. Harry had found the bookshop before he found the writer’s group. He’d been feeling lost in his English lectures, and had just wanted some sign that the way he’d grown up reading wasn’t as irredeemably childish as it sometimes felt.

That’s how Kathleen had found him one day, crying humiliatingly in a back aisle over a copy of _Tess of the D’Urbervilles_. She’d taken one look at him crouched there with a waterlogged novel that he hadn’t purchased, and instead of throwing him out, had brought him into the stockroom for a cup of tea boiled on a fire hazard of an electric kettle. Somehow, that small kindness had been enough to prompt the whole story to come pouring out, and soon Harry was hiccuping his secret desire to drop out of university to a stranger with a no-nonsense mouth and kind eyes, as the kettle rattled alarmingly in the background.

She’d invited him to join her Writer’s Circle that very afternoon, to replace a poet who’d moved to London that summer. Harry had met Niall soon after – Niall’d been reading History at the time – and he’d finally started to feel like he might belong here.

And now, with Kathleen’s retirement, Harry and Niall have had to come to terms with belonging here on a more permanent basis. Even after several years of running the Grimoire, it can still feel a bit like they’re getting away with something, running a bookshop that specializes in Spiritualism right under the nose of one of the institutions that had driven Spiritualist poetry underground in the first place.

Niall starts the meeting, another unspoken tradition, by asking whether anyone has anything new for the group to read. Margaret opens her mouth eagerly, but the three others groan before she can even get a word out. Margaret slumps back into her chair with crossed arms, a vivid reminder that she is still essentially a teenager.

For reasons that nobody but Margaret can fathom, she’d become obsessed with the challenge of growing a banana plant in her flat, and when her natural gardening abilities had proven insufficient to the challenge, had turned to gardening magic to coax the banana plant into being. She’s been working on this plant poem off-and-on for the last several months, and while it’s true that she’s been keeping plants alive for longer with each new draft, they still don’t tend to last.

“It might _not_ be about the banana plant, you know,” Margaret mumbles sullenly.

“Alright,” Niall allows, sweeping his arm at Margaret in a way that conveys both apology and permission to continue. “Margaret, please tell us about your poem.”

Margaret sniffs and hesistates.

“Well it’s just…I _know_ I’m close to achieving artificial sunlight in the second stanza, and if I can do _that--_ ” spills out all in a rush. Harry, Niall, and Remy groan again, even more feelingly this time.

“Mags, it’s a _banana plant_. It needs light, humidity, and care. Even magic can only do so much to compensate for a badly heated student flat, in _England,_ with north-facing windows.”

“Alright but if you’ll just _look--_ ” Margaret insists, brandishing a piece of notebook-lined paper which is covered in pencilled scribbles.

“Fine, let’s have a look,” Remy sighs, always a pushover for doomed magical experiments. They hold out their hand, and Margaret crinkles the paper in her eagerness to pass it over. Remy scans it thoughtfully.

“Actually, this looks rather good. I think you’re right to stick with a very regular meter for the sunlight stanza, and repeating the “light” rhyme will hopefully keep some of it trapped in the poem. Hazza?”

Remy hands Harry the poem next, and it doesn’t take him long to confirm their assessment.

“Can we try it, then?” Margaret asks eagerly.

It’s not often that they perform a spell this quickly after it’s been written. So much of magic is about intention, and while the regulated forms of magical poetry are intended to shape and channel that intention – to create the boundaries that keep it from spilling over in unexpected ways – the consequences of that mix of intention and form aren’t always obvious upon first reading. A spell is most effective when the caster is clear and honest about what they want it to accomplish. The members of a writer’s group are meant to support each other’s spells, but they can also be crucial checks against impulsive spellcasting that might have unexpected effects.

But luckily, plant-magic is about as low-stakes as it gets, and the longer Margaret struggles to perfect her banana plant spell, the laxer their collective standards have grown.

The casting of a spell is rather simple: the four members of the writer’s group sit at the four cardinal directions, each with a written copy of the spell they’re trying to cast. The First Fundamental Law of Magic – the one that says it’s impossible to cast spells on a person without their immediate and present consent – means that traditionally, the subject of a spell sits in the center of a Writer’s Circle. While that’s not _technically_ necessary for non-humans, Margaret nevertheless produces the plant in question with a flourish and places it gently in the center of their circle.

“You don’t know what kind of consciousness a plant has,” Margaret says defensively, when they each look variations on incredulous.

Quickly, she copies out three more versions of the spell – one for each of them – and at a signal from Niall, they start reading the poem aloud in perfect unison. Harry feels the familiar tension in his hands and chest that signals the spell is unfolding, and at the last syllable, feels the equally familiar release of energy, like he’s just taken a deep breath that’s sent oxygen tingling throughout his body. He’s been writing poetry for long enough that he reckons he can sometimes tell how a spell’s going to work out, just from subtle shifts in the way it feels to cast.

This one feels like it’s going to work, and the four of them grin stupidly at each other for a moment. Niall is the first to shake off the sense of tranquility of a successful spellcasting.

“Feels like this one might actually grow a full banana,” Niall says, satisfied and confirming Harry’s own impression of the spell. “What’ll you do once your whole flat is filled with bananas, Mags?”

To their surprise, Margaret flushes and mumbles something indistinct about _practicing_ and _blowjobs_.

“But you’re a _kid_ ,” Niall yelps, even as Harry offers, “You could just buy some…what?”

Niall has his head in his hands, and so it falls to Remy to tell Harry: “I think he feels you’re corrupting the youth.”

“I mean, it started as a kind of joke, but then I got interested in plant magic, so I decided to keep working on the spell anyway,” Margaret clarifies, but it does nothing to smooth over Niall’s elaborate wince of horror. “Figured out the other stuff myself, anyway. Wasn’t so hard.” Margaret shrugs.

“Then I think you were doing it wrong,” Harry interjects. Niall makes a sound like a traumatized gurgle, but Margaret cackles and high-fives Harry across the gap between their seats.

“I think this might be worse than the time Harry decided I had to be his bisexual mentor, and _that_ time had _diagrams_ ,” Niall confides hollowly.

“Having resources is important,” Remy says, tone chiding but eyes dancing. “You’d really begrudge an innocent, eighteen-year-old Harry Styles some of your worldly nineteen-year-old wisdom?”

“Sorry, but I could’ve lived my whole life without being greeted at Monday breakfast by a list of enumerated questions about vibrators. The entire term was like an extended _Fifty Shades of Grey_ outtake.”

“Wait…” Harry blurts out. “You knew I was fucking with you, right?” Niall turns wide, betrayed eyes upon him. “I mean, _okay,_ so I really _didn’t_ know how condoms worked, but you made such a production out of explaining it, I just started asking you the dirtiest questions I could think of. I was trying to see when you’d break. Turns out, it was at anal beads.”

Remy is full-on laughing now, Margaret is giggling so hard she’s liable to fall out of her chair, and Niall looks like Harry has just shattered his entire perception of the world in a single blow.

“This is why, when we go out in public, I pretend not to know you,” Niall finally says, shaking his head. “I did _so much research_ for you.”

“Thought you said any knowledge was important, or does that only apply to dead poets?” Remy interjects virtuously, and Niall scowls.

“You’re all horrible,” he points an accusatory finger around at them, ignoring Margaret’s indignant “hey!” before continuing: “I’m going somewhere my expertise will be _appreciated_.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, I’m sure there are _plenty_ of people who’d appreciate the results of all that sex research,” Harry mumbles, and only feels a _little_ bad when both Niall and Remy instantly turn scarlet.

“Er, right,” Niall coughs. He’s looking very resolutely down at his bag, but seems to be shoving things into it almost at random. “Well, I’ll just…meeting. Weird hotel guy.”

“Oh, you’re actually seeing him, then?”

“Who’s the weird hotel guy?” Remy, who’d been doing an excellent job of examining the ceiling above them, is suddenly focused intently back on the conversation.

“Another one of Niall’s researchers,” Harry explains.

“Not mine,” Niall insists. “He seems like a bit of a nutter, honestly. He’s been going through the journals of this minor poet from the ‘50s, and he’s convinced he’s found something _huge_. Something that’ll change everything we know about magical theory. But I’ve met people like him before. It’s always just a fragment of a reference to someone’s nan seeing a ghost one time. That sort of thing. The more desperate they are to meet right away, the less interesting it always turns out to be.”

“Alright, well, have fun with this bloke’s nan, then,” Remy smirks, and Niall heaves a huge groan as he drags himself out of the shop. Remy and Margaret both leave soon after him, Margaret cradling her banana plant in her arms. Harry is the last to leave. It’s another of his rituals, and one that he knows Niall indulges him in, but nevertheless, Harry prefers to be the one to lock the Grimoire’s front door for the night. He likes feeling the weight of the shop key, secure in his pocket.

His flat is only fifteen minutes away by foot. Harry doesn’t mind the walk, even in the dark. It’s not very late, but Harry’s route directs him away from the most populated areas, so the streets are quiet already, only Harry’s footsteps sounding in muffled taps against the pavement.

A figure detaches itself from the shadows of a nearby row of flats just as Harry passes them, and Harry can’t help the small gasp he lets out, before he comes back to himself with a shaky laugh.

“Elaine. Why are you skulking under a hedgerow?”

“Hazza.” The nickname -- and the sound of it in Elaine’s voice -- are both quite familiar to Harry, but something about hearing it tonight brings him up short. He peers at her. Elaine has always been rather pale, but the chiaroscuro contrast between the darkness and the wash of the streetlamps makes her look particularly washed out, almost sickly, with her eyes set into the rest of her face like dark pools. There’s an odd tension to her mouth and to her shoulders, shifting her well-known figure into a new shape, and making Harry wonder, for one strange, disorienting moment, if this is truly his friend after all.

Elaine had been the fourth member of their writer’s group before Margaret, and she and Niall had loathed each other with an intensity that would have been mildly hilarious – Harry didn’t think Niall truly _hated_ anyone – if Harry hadn’t always been the one called upon to play peacemaker between them. Even Remy had regarded Elaine with some wariness.

It had been that reason – or perhaps any other of a hundred – that had finally prompted Elaine to leave and join another Writer’s Circle in town, although she and Harry have stayed friends.

“I was waiting for you,” Elaine continues, tossing her ash-blond hair as though Harry is ridiculous for not having figured that out immediately. “Something’s going on, and it has me worried.”

“Yeah?” Harry doesn’t realize he’s stepped closer to her and lowered his voice until he’s done both, and then feels a bit silly for it. Elaine can be a little intense about magic. Overprotective of what she considers magical secrets, as though the very fact they’d been passed down for generations confers some inherent value-by-proxy on whoever receives them next. Harry’s sure whatever’s got her worried is something Harry himself will consider rather harmless. Like the time some Oxford undergraduates had experimented with a five-member Writing Circle and Elaine had left pamphlets around the Grimoire with dire warnings about the consequences of Daring to Disrupt the Ancient Powers.

“It’s just something I heard—a rumor—” Elaine darts a quick look around them, but the street remains as dark and empty as before. She seems to hesitate, and then blurts out: “Do you know anything about a collector meeting with Niall? About some journals?”

“ _Niall_?” Harry still doesn’t understand what this is all about, but from Elaine’s pale face and her determination to prevent anyone else from overhearing them, Harry is starting to get the feeling that this might be considerably more dire than some light Disrupting of Ancient Powers between friends. “I mean, yeah, he told me. It didn’t seem particularly interesting, though. Well, to anyone but Niall, that is. What sort of rumors?”

A flash of _something_ crosses Elaine’s face. It’s not an expression that Harry recognizes, and something about it makes him go cold. He doesn’t know why he feels this way – he’d _shared poetry_ with this woman, for God’s sake, he _knows_ her – but nevertheless Harry resolves abruptly not to tell Elaine anything else about Niall and Arthur Addison until he understands what she’s planning to do with the information.

“It’s probably nothing,” Elaine says, and if he hadn’t been watching her face so closely before, he might even believe the lie now. But as it is, the longer this conversation goes on, the more skittish Harry feels. “You know how alarmist my writer’s group can be. We’re much more traditional than you lot.”

“Still…” Harry says slowly. “If it’s about Niall, I’d like to know.”

Elaine shrugs in a ‘suit yourself’ gesture, but again, without knowing why he suspects this, Harry gets the impression that _this_ – whatever Elaine is about to say – is what had driven her to wait for Harry on the street tonight.

“My group is worried he’s messing with things he doesn’t understand. And you know Niall – sometimes he gets so excited about a magical discovery, he doesn’t think through the consequences. I just want you both to be safe.” Elaine has drawn a little closer to Harry, and she puts a gentle hand on his arm while she turns her face up to his beseechingly. “I’m here for you, if you need help. I’ve never stopped caring about you – or Niall, or Remy – whatever else happened between the four of us.”

“I know,” Harry says, trying to sound reassuring, rather than just deeply confused. Elaine doesn’t look entirely happy with his response, but she doesn’t say anything more. Instead, she gives him one last, intense look, before murmuring a goodbye and disappearing down the street.

Harry stares after her for a moment before shaking his head and resuming his walk back to his flat. He’s certainly unsettled by the conversation, but he also suspects he’ll never really know what had prompted Elaine to seek him out tonight with cryptic warnings.

Harry arrives home without coming to any conclusions about the odd encounter. He tosses his keys in the chipped little ceramic bowl he keeps by the door – the one that has cats with eyeglasses painted on the sides – and tries to forget about it. He does a quick check of his plants as he walks through the flat. The philodendron creeping off the top of his bookshelf is green and well-watered, the flowers on the windowsill equally healthy, and the hanging ferns only need a bit of water. Margaret may be hopeless with plants and plant magic, but Harry happens to be rather good at both, and he’s filled his tiny flat with about as much greenery as it can sustain while allowing for all the books, films, and photographs that clutter the remaining space on his shelves.

Harry can find whatever he wants at the bookshop, of course, and so the books he keeps at his flat are the only the ones that hold particular significance. Not to mention his favorite films, which sit in their BluRay boxes in a neat row by his television: _Titanic_ and _The Notebook_ , _Grease_ and _Love Actually_ , _Sleepless in Seattle_ and all the others.

The plants looked after, Harry trails into his kitchen to make an absent-minded cup of tea, and then settles onto his squashy sofa as his ancient steam radiator plonks in the background. Despite spending most of the day alone in the bookstore – or as good as, with Niall embroiled in his Brontë project – Harry feels like it’s only now, back in the familiar space of his own flat, that he can finally ruminate properly on his near-encounter with the man by the river.

It had been _perfect_ , regardless of what Niall says about it. Literature is filled with stories of love at first sight, and alright, _granted_ , things hadn’t worked out well for Romeo and Juliet _ultimately_ , but Harry still believes the principle is sound. Everyone writes about meeting someone, and feeling the seismic shift in the landscape of their lives; or about a space being filled that they didn’t know was empty; or about connecting with someone on a deep enough level that it transcends language.

When Harry had seen the man on the path by the Cherwell, it had _finally_ felt just like how it was supposed to feel. Like everything the books and movies had promised. He’d seen the man smile, and it was like Harry already knew him, like he could see the path their future would take, laid out on a map, and Harry knows with a bone-deep certainty that today is the beginning of his own crazy stupid love story.

***

A loud noise startles Harry into wakefulness, and he nearly tumbles off his sofa before he manages to wake up enough to steady himself. Even so, it takes him a few moments of bleary confusion before he identifies the noise that had woken him as the ringing of his doorbell.

Yawning, Harry stumbles to his door and opens it, only to find both Niall and Remy on the other side. Niall just stands silently, blinking at Harry like he’s not really seeing him, while Remy is holding onto Niall’s arm, brown eyes wide and worried. Niall is shaking, Harry realizes with a start. His remaining sleepiness dispelled, Harry pulls Niall into his flat and settles him down on the sofa before turning to Remy.

“What’s happened?” Harry asks urgently as he’s wrapping Niall in the fleece blanket he keeps on the end of his sofa. “Is everyone alright? Is the bookshop--”

Remy opens their mouth to respond, but Niall startles them both by interrupting, voice hoarse but calm.

“No. It’s just…the man from this afternoon. Arthur Addison.” Niall meets Harry’s eyes and enunciates this last bit clearly, insistently, like it’s important that Harry understand it. “He died. Earlier tonight. Before I even arrived at the hotel.”

“The police wanted to talk to Niall,” Remy cuts in then. “Addison had a note in his calendar about their meeting, apparently, and Niall called me in for legal advice during the interview. I tried to get him to go home after, but he insisted on coming here instead.”

“Of course,” Harry says immediately. When he’s had a shock, there’s nowhere he’d rather be than in Niall’s familiar airy flat, and he’s glad Niall feels the same. He sinks down onto the sofa and lets Niall lean into his side.

“I’ll make some tea, yeah?” Remy offers with a soft smile for both of them. By the time they return with a tea pot, Harry’s had the chance to think through the news.

“So hang on, I don’t understand why the police would be interested…”

“He was murdered,” Remy says, with a quick, darting look to Niall, as though afraid of how he’ll react to hearing the word spoken out loud. But Niall just goes a bit paler and stares down at the floor, leaving Remy to keep explaining. “There was a fire, in the hotel. Nobody else was hurt, but anything Addison brought with him to Oxford has been destroyed. The police think…it’s possible he was murdered for the same reason he came to Oxford in the first place.”

Harry stares at Remy with dawning horror.

“But he came to see Niall,” he points out, feeling ill. Niall shakes his head, eyes focused resolutely on the pattern of Harry’s rug.

“It was just some stupid _books_ ,” he mumbles. It’s probably the first time Niall has ever uttered that sentence, but Harry understands what he means nevertheless. “Why would anyone _care_.”

“Elaine,” Harry blurts out, jolted by a mixture of both understanding and fear as he remembers their cryptic conversation only a few hours before.

“Elaine?” Remy wrinkles their nose.

“I ran into her this evening, and she asked after those journals Arthur Addison was meant to have. She was worried, but honestly, none of it made much sense. I assumed she was just hung up on another of their mad traditionalist customs.”

“What was meant to be in those journals?” Remy asks Niall abruptly. “You said it could revolutionize magical theory.”

“I said Addison _thought_ so,” Niall corrects, but his eyes have gone sharper and color is already returning to his face, like the prospect of a magical puzzle is thawing him. “And honestly, I’m not even sure. I’d have to go back through our emails to know exactly what he said. I remember he’d been researching a poet named Paul Ramsay who died in the 1950s, and I suppose he convinced Ramsay’s daughter to hand over her father’s journals. Ramsay was part of a very insular writer’s group in London. Nobody knows much about them, which I suppose is why Addison had been so keen to see the journals. But when I told him I’d barely even _heard_ of Ramsay and I didn’t see how I could help him, he just said that it didn’t matter, and he wanted to talk to me anyway. So I thought…alright, what’s the worst that could happen?”

There’s a brief silence, as they all realize that the question “what’s the worst that could happen?” is no longer rhetorical. Remy shivers, and Niall absently untucks his fleece blanket so that it can drape around both of their shoulders.

“I’ll see what I can find, though,” Niall vows. “Maybe there’s some reference in the Grimoire’s stacks that I’ve missed.”

“Just…do it quietly, yeah?” Harry advises. He suddenly feels cold enough to steal a corner of Niall’s fleece for himself.

The three of them stay curled on the couch for at least the next hour, circling back around over and over to the question of what Arthur Addison might have discovered before he died, and what Elaine may know about it, but by the fourth time they’ve rehearsed the same essential discussion without making any progress, Niall is adrenaline-crashing his way into unconsciousness against Remy’s side, and they all mutually resolve to give up the mystery for the night.

“I’ll just—” Niall makes a sleepy gesture towards Harry’s bedroom, and both Harry and Remy stare at him in shock. Although Harry and Niall have shared beds many times, it’s mostly been because Harry has manhandled a reluctant Niall into a cuddle, and Niall absolutely _loathes_ sleeping in other people’s beds. He’s slept in Harry’s a grand total of three times before: once as comfort when Harry’s grandfather had died, once when a pipe had burst in his own flat, and once due to a food poisoning incident that they’ve both tried to ruthlessly repress.

Remy shoots Harry a helpless look over Niall’s head, but as he’s already ambling towards Harry’s bedroom, Remy clearly decides that silence is the better part of valor. Niall instantly droops onto Harry’s mattress as though he’s already asleep. Remy starts to move away from the side of bed, but Niall startles them both by snaking out a hand to grab their wrist before they can turn fully away.

“Rem,” he mumbles, and Harry can’t remember ever seeing _that_ expression cross Remy’s face before – a flash of something halfway between affection and pain – but their tone is just as unflappable as ever when they say, “I’m just getting a glass of water,” as though their best friends become murder suspects on a biweekly basis.

It’s obvious that the water errand is mainly an excuse for them to speak out of Niall’s hearing, although Remy surprises Harry by making a beeline for his poky kitchen rather than pausing in the main room. By the time he arrives in the kitchen doorway, they’re busy rifling through his cupboards with their back turned.

“Will he be alright, d’you think?” Remy asks, in an odd, strained tone. It’s only when they move to kitchen sink that Harry can see how their hands are shaking as they try to fill the glass.

The question and Remy’s clear distress shocks him into saying, “Of course. You don’t think so?”

“How should I know?” Remy whirls around suddenly, water sloshing over the rim of the overfull glass and splashing on the floor. “You’re his best friend. This is the bit you’re good at.”

There’s a wildness to Remy’s expression, and something about it strikes Harry with a sudden memory. Remy usually has a very serene approach to both life and magic. They’re pragmatic in a way that reminds Harry strongly of Niall, despite the fact that when it comes to the details of magic-use, neither of them agree on _anything_. But a few months after Remy joined their writing group, Harry had stopped by their flat to borrow a stand-mixer Remy’d promised him for a baking project, only to find Remy systematically tearing pages out of their poetry collections, surrounded by the crumpled remains of destroyed books. Harry will never forget the way Remy had looked and sounded as they’d lifted their head very slowly to stare at Harry and, with a weary sort of emphasis, had said: “What is the _point_.”

Harry had understood exactly what they meant. He reckons that every Spiritualist poet had to grapple at some point with the limits of their own power; the fact that their magic could encourage, and nudge, and soothe, but often because of the very obliqueness of its influence, could leave you feeling more helpless than ever to change anything truly important.

“Rem,” he tries. “You’re good at this bit, too.”

Remy laughs wildly as more water hits the floor. There’s a hectic flush working its way up the usually cool skin of their cheeks. “I’m rubbish. I didn’t do anything. Couldn’t get the police to postpone the interview—”

Harry crosses the kitchen to grip Remy’s shoulders firmly. The damp glass presses between them.

“ _Remy_ ,” Harry repeats, catching their eyes and maintaining the contact. “Niall is _fine_.”

Remy stares at Harry for a few heartbeats more, and then seems to just sag into him, water and all.

“What if he’s really in danger?” Remy mumbles into the fabric of Harry’s jumper. Harry opens his mouth to answer, and then realizes he has no idea what to say. He’d been trying not to think about it himself. After a few moments, Remy pulls back and offers Harry a small smile. And then Remy frowns down at the glass still in their hands with almost comical levels of confusion. Water has soaked down the fronts of both their jumpers, and Remy laughs again at the sight.

“Lucky I saved my breakdown for the kitchen, yeah? Easier to clean up.”

Remy leaves to check on Niall again, and Harry pragmatically stretches out on his sofa with his fleece blanket. And true to his silent prediction, Remy still hasn’t returned from the bedroom by the time Harry falls asleep.

When he wakes up the next morning to check on Niall, it’s to find the two of them curled up on the bed, facing each other and foreheads only a few inches apart. Niall has one hand fisted in the front of Remy’s button-up – they must have stripped off their wet jumper from the night before – while Remy has a hand splayed out on the mattress between them, like they were reaching out for Niall in their sleep.

Harry smiles at the picture and then goes to put on some tea.

He’s right about Niall being fine. By the time he’s finished with the tea, Niall has bounced into the kitchen, his disbelieving numbness of the night before completely dissipated.

***

Days pass, and every time Harry asks Niall about Addison – how Niall felt about it, or even about the emails Niall had promised to look over – Niall deflects the question with a lack of concern that’s now verging on worrying. Remy is rather visibly trying not to hover anxiously over Niall’s every move, but even Harry is beginning to think that drastic measures are necessary.

Which is why today finds them both crouched in the _Star Wars_ novelization aisle of Rivendell with a stack of guerilla Post-Its.

“I didn’t even know Addison, and the timing of his murder could have been a total coincidence. You’re thinking about this more than any of it deserves,” Niall is busy deflecting again, as he scrawls “Rey was here” onto a Post-It and sticks it to the cover of a book.

“Then why haven’t you done any research on Paul Ramsay?” Harry counters, tilting his head as he considers the porg sketch on his own Post-It.

“It’s not like I’ve had the time--” Niall begins, but Harry just waves a _Star Wars_ paperback at him without even bothering to look up. There’s a very telling silence to his left.

“’S just… _weird_ ,” Niall finally concedes. “Like. We sell books for a living. Our lives aren’t exactly meant to be _Indiana Jones_.”

Harry flicks a glance up at him, but Niall is focused resolutely on a new Post-It.

“You won’t know if his death is related to those journals until you look,” Harry tries. “Don’t you think it’s better to know?”

“Always,” Niall sighs. When he turns to face Harry, he’s got a Post-It stuck to his own forehead with “Fear is the path to the Dark Side” scrawled across it. He gives Harry a wide smile.

“…Do I even want to know?” a familiar voice suddenly interrupts. Harry turns to find Liam blinking at them both from down the aisle.

“Just offering some words of wisdom to your customers!” Niall chirps.

“Oh god.” Liam buries his face in his hands. “Look, lads, I really don’t have time for this today. The shop’s having a poetry reading tonight, and there’s _loads_ left to organize...” He raises his head and fixes Harry with a slightly wild look, and as usual, Harry can’t find it in himself to keep teasing him.

“Poetry? _Here_?” Niall says. He probably doesn’t mean it to come out sounding quite so suspicious, especially given how close Liam already seems to tears. For all his grand proclamations and petty tricks, Niall has always been careful never to push Liam too far.

But Liam doesn’t even seem to notice the implied slight, because he only says, “Not your kind,” with an absent wave of his hand. “It’s my best mate, he’s agreed— and there were meant to be _cakes_ , but they’ve just called and there was some mixup with the delivery—”

“That’s bollocks. Poetry requires cake, everyone knows that,” Niall tells him stoutly, which Harry suspects is as close as Liam will ever get to receiving an apology for anything they’ve ever done to him.

“So now, of course, someone needs to go pick them up, but Marie just quit, and there’s nobody else, and it’s not like I could _close the shop._ ”

“Course not, that would be mad,” Niall coughs, looking as innocent as a person can look with a Post-It still stuck to their head.

“Yeah, Ni, why don’t you go check on our…assistant,” Harry says, in what he’s certain is an extremely convincing manner, even if it makes Niall muffle laughter into his sleeve. “And I can do a bakery run, Liam. Don’t worry.”

Liam breathes an audible sigh of relief. “I’ll email you the invoice. Thanks, you’re a fantastic friend,” he sighs, before he’s off onto his next task.

“Well, that’s unlucky,” Niall says, smiling at Harry a little wryly. “We can’t escape the friendship now.” Harry blinks, oddly struck by something familiar in Niall’s phrasing. He can’t place it. It’s like the most frustrating feeling of deja-vu…

Harry only realises he hasn’t responded when Niall tilts his head and asks, “Alright? You don’t really mind going to that bakery, do you?”

“Oh! Erm, no, it’s really fine,” Harry confirms, and tries to ignore the odd warning bells that have just gone off in his mind, for no reason that Harry can discern.

“Great,” Niall responds, noticeably relieved. Harry can tell they both remember, at the same moment, that the last time Niall had left the shop to do a favor for Liam, it had ended with him just missing a meeting with Arthur Addison. Harry shivers, and his sense of foreboding increases.

They leave Rivendell together, and Harry has the vague impression that Niall is talking to him, but he’s not listening at all. He still feels strangely unsettled as he tries to work through Niall’s familiar turn of phrase from earlier, poking at the feeling in his mind like it’s a lost tooth until he finally announces in triumph, “Pride and Prejudice!” and realizes that he’s standing alone on a street corner, Niall having said goodbye and turned into the Grimoire a block ago. The two other pedestrians waiting for the light give Harry distinctly odd looks, but Harry’s just relieved to have figured out what had been bothering him before.

What Niall had said sounded like a quote from the beginning of _Pride and Prejudice_ , although originally, Harry thinks it’s: “We cannot escape the acquaintance now.” It’s an almost irrelevant bit of dialogue meant to set up the Elizabeth Bennet’s eventual meeting with Mr. Darcy. It was inadvertently done, Harry’s certain, because he doesn’t think Niall has ever read the novel, but it’s certainly a funny coincidence.

The vibration of his phone in his pocket makes Harry jump, but it’s just Liam’s email, with the bakery’s details. By the time Harry’s made a note of the address and walked to the proper bus stop, the minor mystery of the _Pride and Prejudice_ paraphrase is almost entirely forgotten.

***

The second time he encounters his soulmate, Harry is on the bus, pastry box in hand. He’s sat by a window, but he isn’t even looking out of it until the bus trundles over a bridge and something like fate makes Harry turn his head at just the right moment.

And there he is again. He’s walking along the pavement next to the bus, his hands shoved in the pockets of a worn brown bomber jacket and his head ducked down, like he’s consumed by the thoughts in his head, rather than paying attention to his surroundings. The man is probably a bit shorter than Harry, he realizes now, but his stride is long and fast, his every movement decisive, like once he’s settled on a destination, he’s unwilling to wait to get there.

Harry catalogues all this in the few seconds it takes for the bus to pass him, craning his neck backwards to get a last final glimpse. And for a moment – a heartbeat – the man glances up at the bus and their eyes meet through the glass. The piercing blue of them sends a jolt of electricity fizzling down Harry’s spine. It feels as though in that instant, the man had seen just as much of Harry as Harry had seen of him.

Then the bus accelerates through an intersection, and the man is gone from view.

Harry leaps out at the next stop, with no plan for what to do when he finds the man, only the certainty that he _must_. But there’s no sign of the man on the bridge where Harry had last seen him, nor along any of the nearby streets, and after minutes of fruitless searching, Harry is forced to give up.

Harry makes it back to Rivendell in a daze. Liam swoops down upon the pastry box immediately, still looking harried, but less like he’s one misplaced set of folding chairs away from destroying Rivendell for the insurance payout.

“ _Thank you_ ,” he breathes as he takes the box of cakes from Harry. He’s turning away, but then pauses.

“Erm, did you want to stay for the reading?” Liam asks hesitantly. “My friend’s a brilliant poet, even if he’s not—” He makes a vague gesture at Harry that could mean anything from “magical like you” to “a total nutter like you.”

“I mean, if the poetry’s not in Klingon, I’m always a bit lost,” Liam continues, “but he’s proper famous, so he must be good.”

Harry, who had been fully intending to refuse the invitation no matter what, but who’d had a vivid image of “Liam’s friend the poet” as _exactly_ the kind of person who wrote in Klingon, suddenly narrows his eyes.

“Liam, who _is_ your friend?”

“Ah, his name’s Louis Tomlinson? Maybe you’ve heard of him?” Liam asks innocently, while Harry just stares.

Of course Harry’s _heard_ of him. Louis Tomlinson is a proper celebrity, probably the most famous British writer since J. K. Rowling. Everyone knows his story: the way he’d started out by publishing poetry online, under the pseudonym Alfred Lord, but the blog had gone viral and inspired a barrage of thinkpieces titled things like “Are Millenials Bringing Poetry Back?”

Everyone’d had a theory about who “Alfred Lord” really was – like they thought they were solving the Jack the Ripper case or something – and _everyone_ ’d had an opinion about whether he was a Spiritualist or not. While everyone seemed to agree that the name “Alfred Lord” was a clear reference to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the famous nineteenth-century Poet Laureate, they disagreed sharply on what that reference meant. Classicists argued that Tennyson was a total establishment Classicist poet: he wrote constantly about medieval and classical imagery, and he was appointed by Queen Victoria herself. But Spiritualists pointed out that Tennyson had struggled with his role as a celebrity all his life. He’d eventually retreated from London society entirely, only associating with artistic friends whom he invited specifically, in groups of three, to stay with him. Spiritualists have always considered it likely that Tennyson was trying to create his own Writing Circle in the relative anonymity of the countryside – if it had ever become widely known that Queen Victoria had appointed a Spiritualist as Poet Laureate, the scandal would have been massive, so it’s no wonder that Tennyson wanted to keep it quiet.

But what better pseudonym could there be for a 21st century Spiritualist poet who was invested in keeping their identity hidden?

Harry had only been a teenager himself, but he remembers being thoroughly convinced. He reckoned that even if he didn’t know for _sure_ that Alfred Lord was a Spiritualist, he could still feel the sheer _power_ in the words of his poetry. Alfred Lord’s poetry had been beautiful, but more than that, reading it was like standing in a thunderstorm: electricity crackling, senses drowned out, the palpable awareness of what it means to call something a “force of nature.”

It was because of Alfred Lord that Harry started writing down verse fragments himself. He didn’t have a Writing Circle to share them with yet, but just the dream of it was enough to sustain him.

And then Alfred Lord had been revealed to be a teenager named Louis Tomlinson, and Harry’d been forced to admit he’d been wrong about everything.

Rather than avoid celebrity like Tennyson had done, Tomlinson promptly moved to London and spent the majority of the next year in the tabloids with different groups of famous friends. Not that Harry had read those tabloid articles. Or set up a news alert for any mention of “Alfred Lord” or “Louis Tomlinson.” He was _busy_ , after all.

But even worse were the interviews, which Harry couldn’t help but coincidentally stumble upon, and definitely had _nothing_ to do with the news alert that Harry definitely _didn’t_ have. Because it turned out that not only was Louis Tomlinson _not_ a Spiritualist, he had a thorough disdain for magical poetry entirely. Harry remembers one quote from a print interview vividly: “There’s such power in words – and a beauty to words – all on their own. I don’t need them to _do_ anything. When I write, I only ever ask them to be what they are.” Harry remembers being infuriated by the arrogance of it; by how thoroughly he’d managed to _totally mischaracterize_ what magic was all about, _obviously_.

“Er, I guess you don’t know him?” Liam has apparently taken Harry’s expression of _total shock_ for lack of recognition. Harry struggles to find a non-insulting way to ask about the friendship that Liam supposedly has with Louis “Attended Florence Welch’s Karaoke Birthday Party” Tomlinson.

Although – Liam had said his name French-sounding, like _Lou-ee_ , when everyone knows it’s pronounced like _Lewis_ , so Harry has to wonder how well Liam really does know him. On the other hand, if Louis Tomlinson has agreed to do a poetry reading in _Rivendell_ , of all places, he’d have to be quite a good friend.

“Erm, that’s kind of you to invite me, Liam,” Harry finally says, more curious about Liam than he’s ever been, but also _miles_ less willing to attend this event than when he’d thought the poetry would just be _bad_. “I can’t tonight, but I’m sure it’ll go really well.”

He attempts to muster up an enthusiasm that he doesn’t truly have. Liam doesn’t appear to notice the difference, because he just beams at Harry and sneaks him one of the cakes as he leaves.

***

It is the third time that Harry crosses paths with his soulmate that convinces him, without any further doubt, that either magic or fate is responsible for bringing them together. Because this time, when the man appears in Harry’s life, it is within the walls of the Grimoire itself.

Harry is in the reading loft with a well-worn copy of _David Copperfield_ when he hears the bell on the shop door ring. At first he pays it little attention, since he knows that Niall is at the counter. Harry drifts for a while, drawn back in to the novel, until something about the murmur of voices at the front of the shop attracts his attention again.

“It’s quite impressive,” an unfamiliar voice is saying, high but with a timbre to it that conjures a feeling of warmth, the smile audible in his tone.

“Thanks,” Niall replies. Even that one word is so palpably filled with pride that Harry knows they can only be discussing the Grimoire’s magical history collection.

“And the fact that your shop window has an extremely clear view of the Bodleian? As rebellions against the establishment go, it’s not exactly a subtle one,” the customer continues, in what sounds like a combination of laughter and approval.

“Subtlety is for magic and cooking,” Niall recites the well-worn phrase virtuously.

In many ways, it’s a thoroughly innocuous conversation. Niall has probably charmed customers with a similar line thousands of times. But there’s something about the exchange that has Harry closing his book and craning his head around the balustrade of the reading nook for a better view.

Even then, the angle isn’t quite right to get an unobstructed look at front of the shop, and Harry finds himself perched precariously on the spiral staircase leading down from the loft. He’ll look well stupid if either the stranger or Niall happens to look up and see him hanging off the side of his own staircase, but _finally_ he can see the stranger’s swirl of golden-brown hair and the richer brown of the leather jacket that clings to his slight frame. The man turns his head slightly, and Harry gasps and nearly falls down the stairs.

Because it’s his soulmate. _Of course_ it is. Who else could a voice like _that_ belong to, if not an elusive man with the sun in his hair and a notebook in his hands?

In Harry’s shock, he’s missed a bit of the conversation between Niall and the man, but his attention is recaptured in time to hear Niall ask: “Find everything you needed, then, mate?”

“Louis,” the stranger says amiably, and reaches out his hand for Niall to shake. And the laughter is back in his voice when he says, “I did, yeah. A bit of rebellion was _exactly_ what I needed today. Thanks.”

“ _Louis_ ,” Harry whispers to himself, and saying the word aloud feels somehow like a spell does when Harry can tell it’s gone right: a fizzling in his fingertips and a sense that the sounds of the words are echoing somewhere just slightly beyond human hearing.

When Harry looks toward the front of the shop again, the door is already swinging shut behind the man’s retreating back.

The feeling of static electricity at Harry’s fingertips intensifies, and before he knows it, he’s reaching for the notebook he’d brought up to the reading loft with him, before he’d tossed it casually aside in favor of re-reading his favorite Dickens novel.

The words of a spell flow out of him like – well, like magic. Harry doesn’t even have to think. It’s like the words are already there, in his head, just waiting to be called upon. Lots of spatial metaphors, for mapping and searching. The phrasing carries over from one line to the next, like the words are chasing each other through the poem. And the rhymes all end in a long “e” sound. Harry may never directly write “Louis” into the poem, but the sounds of his name echo through it nevertheless. Louis, the missing piece around which the whole poem revolves.

He finishes scribbling down the poem with a slight pencil flourish on the final word, and, breathing a little hard, he skims it over. Even now, only seconds later, the act of creating the poem is starting to fade into a hazy memory. Harry might even start to question whether he’d written it at all, or whether he’d accidentally fallen asleep while reading Dickens and imagined the whole thing. But the poem is there, in irrefutable pencil strokes in his notebook, and Harry recognizes the structure of a Finding Spell instantly, from the fact that the target of the poem is never explicitly conjured, just referenced in sound and structure.

He supposes it’s not the _worst_ way to make sure he and Louis meet again. Just because their love is fated doesn’t mean Harry can’t try to nudge fate along a bit… Dreamily, he murmurs his way through the poem, drawing out each “e” rhymes with a shivery sort of relish.

The last words of the poem are still resonating through the quiet of the loft when Harry blinks and shoots up in his seat. He…hadn’t meant to read the poem aloud, he’s _sure_ he hadn’t. It’s one of the first rules of spell-writing he was taught: _don’t_ speak anything aloud. The sounds call the magic, and without your writing circle protecting you, it becomes uncontrollable. Unpredictable.

Harry _knows_ better. He _absolutely_ knows better.

And now, when he tries to remember _why_ he’d started speaking out loud, he can’t recall making the conscious choice at all. It had just _felt right_ , like it was all supposed to happen. Like he was following the proper path.

Harry takes a deep breath and tries to relax. Maybe it would be fine. Every great love story has unexpected twists. Choices that maybe aren’t the wisest, but which come out alright in the end. He’s been trusting his instincts so far. Maybe, now, the best option is to keep going.

Harry does know one thing for sure, though: Niall is going to absolutely _murder_ him.

***

Harry spends the time until their Tuesday Writing Circle meeting skulking around the Grimoire, avoiding Niall without making it _look_ like he’s avoiding Niall, since Niall has the uncanny ability to pinpoint the very thing you _least_ want him to notice. Or perhaps Harry is just a very bad liar. But whatever the reason, he’s vaguely surprised that he makes it to Tuesday un-interrogated. Niall, however, has finally thrown himself into the search for information on Paul Ramsay with all the gusto he’d initially lacked, so he’s thankfully distracted from any suspicion that Harry has been engaging in serious, unsupervised magic.

“…It’s just frustrating,” Niall is saying to Remy when they both walk into the Grimoire for that week’s meeting. “I’ve put in three calls to Paul Ramsay’s daughter in London, and she still hasn’t gotten back to me. How did Addison ever manage to reach her?”

“Will you go to London yourself, d’you think?” Remy asks curiously.

“God, I hope not. With any luck, she’ll just return the fuckin’ call.” Niall sighs heavily.

“So the search for information on Ramsay isn’t going well?” Harry ventures, relieved again for the reprieve.

“’S an understatement,” Niall groans. “If Addison wasn’t dead because of him, I’d say he made up Ramsay entirely. All I’ve been able to discover is more of what I already knew: Ramsay was a part of a writer’s group that formed soon after World War II, but they kept to themselves. Never shared their poetry or socialized much with other Spiritualists. But nobody was writing much, then, so I suppose they flew under the radar a bit.”

“Why not?” Harry interjects. “You’d think, after something like a war, people would need the writing?”

It’s Remy who shakes their head and interjects. “I think, with people who become Spiritualists? It’s usually for one of two reasons, y’know? You want to believe that magic can either remake the parts of _yourself_ that are wrong, or the parts of the universe that are.”

“Can’t it?” Harry blurts out, and then immediately feels stupid for asking. But Remy just shoots Harry a crooked, fond smile.

“I think when you and I say ‘remake the world,’ we’re talking about different things, Hazza. Magic takes optimism and care, but it’s not a fix. For anything. That’s a hard lesson to learn, especially when someone’s seen the worst of the world. And I don’t think most people are prepared to learn it.” Remy smiles again, rather sadly this time, and shrugs.

“Well, I dunno about Rem’s theory. I became a Spiritualist for the stuff,” Niall jokes with a casual wave around at the Grimoire, but he leans comfortingly into Remy’s side as he says it. Remy rolls their eyes and nudges back.

“Yes, that legendary Niall Horan self-awareness, at work once again.”

“Hey, while you and Harry are worrying about changing the world, I’ll just keep on amassing books. Works for dragons.” He looks so satisfied with that image that Harry can’t help but laugh.

“It has literally _never_ worked for dragons. In like, the history of literature. Never.”

Niall opens his mouth automatically, fully prepared with a rebuttal, and then he stops. Frowns. Opens his mouth again—

“You can’t come up with a counter-example, can you?” Harry asks, amused.

“Give me a minute!”

“Dragons aside, your word-hoard hasn’t exactly helped you solve the mystery of Paul Ramsay, has it?”

“Low blow, Rem,” Niall says sourly. “Books can’t help when the information’s not there to be found. Like I said – so many people just stopped writing entirely after World War II. And all four members of Ramsay’s writing group died within a few months of each other in 1956, so there was nobody to pass along the history of the group to someone else. Bad luck, yeah?”

“ _Creepily_ bad luck,” Harry notes. Remy scrunches their nose and nods in agreement.

“Oh c’mon you’re both getting as bad as Margaret. Next you’ll want me to hold a séance and try to communicate with Addison’s ghost, or some other mad idea.”

“OK, but ghosts _could_ —” Harry starts, just as Remy groans: “How do you have so little sense of whimsy, you’re like a human actuarial ledger.”

“Yeah well _you’re_ both the worst,” Niall huffs. “What is it about this poet that makes everyone lose all perspective? Can you believe one of my contacts even warned me away from Ramsay because they said he was _evil_?”

“Evil?” Remy interjects sharply.

“Ugh, I should never even have told you that.” Niall narrows his eyes at Remy and Harry, as though daring them both to push him further. “It’s obviously nonsense. Even if Paul Ramsay was the worst person in the world, magic isn’t evil. It’s classic anti-magic propaganda. Someone’s a little odd and reclusive, and suddenly they’re drawing pentagrams on their floor. Which, incidentally? Does more damage to your floor than anything else.”

“Oh really, and what would you know about Satanism and all that?” Remy asks, amused.

Niall sticks his nose in the air. “I have layers,” he insists.

Remy opens their mouth to respond, but before they can, the door to the Grimoire crashes open and Margaret dashes through, her jacket buttons done up crookedly and dark brown curls wisping out of her bun.

“Sorry I’m late,” she pants. “The boy who has the next shift at the pub didn’t show up, and I had to stay until they could call someone else in.”

“Y’know, Mags, if you need a job, the Grimoire--” Harry can’t help but remind her. It’s a familiar argument between them, one that Harry knows he has no hope of winning.

“Please, Styles, like you could afford me,” Margaret smirks. This is, unfortunately, true.

“D’you think it’ll be a long meeting tonight?” Margaret continues. “Only I’ve got to finish a paper for my next tutorial, and I’m still not convinced James Joyce was writing in English, but obviously I can’t say that to my tutor, so.”

“We could always help you with it,” Remy offers, and Niall pulls a face but nods obligingly once Remy kicks him.

“Oh God, _would_ you?” Margaret blurts out, and then collapses into her seat in the writer’s circle in a dramatic display of relief. “I haven’t even had time this week to work on my gardening spells. _Bloody_ Modernist novels are so _hard_.”

“I’ve been so busy with this Ramsay research, I don’t have anything new either,” Niall agrees. “So maybe we’ll have a short meeting after all. Remy?”

Remy shakes their head as well.

“I’ve got something, actually,” Harry begins, deliberately avoiding looking over at Niall’s end of the circle. “Thought I’d try, erm – a location spell?”

“What are you looking to find?” Remy asks curiously. Even without turning toward him directly, Harry can tell Niall has gone abruptly still in his seat.

A Finding Spell for a person is _technically_ possible, because it _technically_ attaches to the person who’s searching, and not the person or thing you’re looking to find, and therefore doesn’t violate the First Fundamental Law of Magic (which says that the subject of a spell has to be present for its casting), but it’s still a bit of a borderline case, and involves some _extremely_ tricky magic.

It’s not that Harry _blames_ Niall for being concerned, exactly, it’s just…he doesn’t know how to explain that he hadn’t even _meant_ to write it, without coming off as crazy.

“Seriously, Haz? You’re still on about River Boy?” Niall finally asks.

“River Boy? Are you looking for mermaids?” Margaret interrupts with delight.

“No, he was a real boy, _by_ the river, and his name’s not--”

“Could be,” Niall says, ever practical. “His name _could be_ River Boy, and how would you know otherwise? You never even spoke to him.”

“So his first name is “River” and his surname is “Boy?” Remy asks, tilting their head toward Niall.

“ _Mermaids_ ,” Margaret insists.

“He’s _not_ a mermaid, and his name is _not_ River Boy. His name’s Louis, and I’ve already started the spell, so you can all fuck right off,” Harry interrupts loudly, and then winces. That might not have been the _best_ way to reveal that particular fact.

The others promptly go quiet, and Harry looks around at their silent faces somewhat defiantly. Margaret looks confused and a little hurt. The first signs of worry are starting to creep over Remy’s face, and Harry can tell that Niall has gone right past “first signs” and directly into “unmitigated panic,” which Harry doesn’t think is _entirely_ fair.

“Oh fuck me, you didn’t,” Niall says hoarsely. Yes, that is indeed the sound of Niall panicking.

“Who’s Louis then?” Remy asks, blinking between Niall and Harry.

“A bloke Harry’s barely met, who he’s decided to fall in love with. Which was worrying enough, without bringing _magic_ into it.”

“Oh, you wrote a Cinderella spell?” Margaret sighs. “How _romantic_!”

“I didn’t _decide_ \--” Harry begins to insist, before he considers that picking his battles might be the better part of valor.

“You wrote a Cinderella spell for a man you just met,” Remy repeats, and their tone is perfectly neutral, but Harry finds himself bristling anyway.

“I am bisexual, if any of you needed reminding,” he says loudly.

“Nobody fuckin’ needs reminding, Haz, we’re all queer—” Niall starts.

“My mate Ella says that our brains keep developing until we turn 25, so like, nothing we do really counts until then anyway. Our sexualities should all be labeled as ‘undetermined,’” Margaret interjects, for reasons known only to Margaret.

Niall blinks. “We’re circling back around to that,” he says, pointing sharply at Margaret. “After we deal with Harry’s thing. Actually, hang on, I know a book—”

While Niall drags Margaret into the stacks, Remy turns seriously towards Harry. “Why _are_ you in love with Louis?”

Remy doesn’t question that Harry _is_ in love, and Harry’s grateful enough that he attempts a proper response. He does his best to explain the _Middlemarch_ thing again. Remy nods, once, like it was the answer they were expecting.

“I think there’s a diference,” Remy finally says carefully, “between understanding and accepting your sexuality or gender identity – being comfortable with it as a part of yourself – and realizing that it might also allow you to see new, different paths forward in your own future. That you aren’t limited just to the things that other people might want. I know I felt that way...”

“But meeting Louis didn’t open up any _new_ paths for me. I’ve been waiting for a soulmate my whole life. Maybe that’s what Niall doesn’t understand about all this.”

“No, I think it’s actually the opposite. I’d suspect he’s worried this path isn’t one of the…real ones.”

“Is that what you think, too?” Harry can’t help but wilt a bit. If even _Remy_ isn’t on his side…

“I think…” Remy frowns. “When you looked at Louis, and you saw Dorothea Brooke from _Middlemarch_? You’ll have to decide for yourself what that means.”

_Well, that’s surpremely unhelpful_ , Harry thinks rather sourly, but before he can respond out loud, Niall and Margaret are barrelling back into their circle. Margaret is staggering under the weight of half their LGBTQ Resources section and looking rather shell-shocked by the whole ordeal.

“—just ask. After Harry, I’m prepared for _anything_ ,” Niall is telling Margaret confidently, while Margaret just nods at him, wide-eyed.

“I think we should help Harry with his Finding Spell,” Remy suddenly blurts out, and all three of them turn to stare.

What?” Niall squawks, dropping several books in indignation. “Like hell--”

“The damage has been done, anyway, if Harry already started the spell,” Remy interrupts placatingly. “The best thing we can do is try to direct it properly now.”

“But—” Niall makes a cryptic gesture toward Harry that Harry doesn’t understand, but is fully prepared to be insulted by, but then Remy grabs Niall by the arm and hauls him toward the bookstore’s back office. The two of them immediately start whispering intently at each other, continuing until they’re fully out of earshot.

“Wouldn’t worry now,” Margaret announces, carefully depositing her stack of books next to her chair before tilting her head up to smile at Harry. “Remy’ll bring Niall around.”

“Right, because Niall’s always so willing to follow Remy’s lead,” Harry scoffs. “He’d insist the sky was green if Remy told him it was blue.”

“Oh please, Haz. I know you’ve read _that_ story before,” Margaret laughs, gesturing lazily toward all the books that surround them.

And, sure enough, Remy and Niall return a few moments later, Niall glowering but compliant.

“Fine, we’re doing the spell. As long as it’s noted it was over my _strenuous objections_.”

“So noted,” Margaret retorts cheerfully. “Let’s see the spell, then, Haz.”

Harry passes it around, and even Niall looks begrudgingly impressed.

“This could actually work,” he mumbles, quietly like he was hoping the rest of them wouldn’t hear it.

After each of the others takes a few moments to familiarize themselves with the words of the spell, they start to recite it. There’s a moment, where Harry can feel the familiar buzz of magic flowing through him, easy and free, and he thinks it all might work out, after all. And then something _wrenches_ – it feels like his heart has skipped a beat, and Harry distantly hears one of the others gasp – and the magical crackle cuts off like a musical instrument being dampened.

The four members of the circle stare at each other, wide-eyed and shaken.

It’s Margaret who finally breaks the silence. “Did it work?” she asks with a shudder.

“No,” Niall says, looking pale.

“That felt more…violent than a failed spell usually does,” Remy says, biting their lip. “Do you think it worked, but went wrong somehow?” Remy glances apologetically at Harry when they say it, and Harry knows what they aren’t saying. If it went wrong, it was probably Harry’s fault for starting the spell without the rest of them.

But Niall is shaking his head thoughtfully. “I don’t feel anything now, so I think it just…fell apart.”

“Maybe that’s for the best, it was probably a stupid idea in the first place,” Harry says, but he can’t tell if the feeling in the pit of his stomach is relief, disappointment, or the vestiges of the spellcasting. At Harry’s admission, though, Niall’s face instantly clears. Harry hadn’t realized how worried Niall had been about this whole Louis thing, until it seemed like Harry was willing to drop it.

The Writing Circle meeting doesn’t last much longer than that; Harry reckons they’re all ready to put that unsettling spellcasting experience behind them. They even convince Margaret to join them at the pub, where Remy and Niall read through her Modernism essay over a pint, and, predictably, argue over the changes they think she should make, until Margaret rolls her eyes and bullies Harry into helping her properly.

It all feels so easy and familiar. They’re smiling wider and laughing louder than any of them have done since Arthur Addison died, and Harry feels so terribly guilty for the fact that the entire time he’s reading Margaret’s essay, or up at the bar ordering more lagers for the four of them, or planning a new campaign of terror against Liam, while Remy puts their hands over Margaret’s ears and accuses them of corrupting the youth, Harry never once stops thinking about Louis, or about the Finding Spell that was meant to bring them together.


	2. Chapter 2

__

_There she weaves by night and day_  
_A magic web with colours gay._  
_She has heard a whisper say,_  
_A curse is on her if she stay_  
_To look down to Camelot._  
_She knows not what the curse may be,_  
_And so she weaveth steadily,_  
_And little other care hath she,  
_ _The Lady of Shalott._

 _And moving thro’ a mirror clear_  
_That hangs before her all the year,  
_ _Shadows of the world appear._

 

The fourth place that Harry sees Louis is the same as the first: on the Cherwell river embankment, with his head bent over a notebook. And four is a magic number, as everyone knows.

Harry can’t imagine it’s a coincidence that his pattern of meetings with Louis have had the same structure as an envelope rhyme. The pattern A-B-C-A encloses unfamiliar sounds in a comforting embrace. And it certainly feels comforting, to see Louis again, back where they started. In fact, it’s such a perfect structure that Harry feels momentarily disoriented by it, like he’s part of a lucid dream where he’s unable to disentangle his own desires from some other, invisible agency. Is it Harry himself who smiles tentatively at Louis? Or is it someone else smiling for him?

Louis glances up from the notebook in his hands – a battered blue composition book that Harry could imagine having used for school notes, once upon a time. He cocks his head, squinting like he’s trying to place Harry.

“I hope you’re not one of my students, because I have no idea who you are,” he finally says, with a small, self-deprecating laugh.

This close, Louis doesn’t exude the same sense of stillness that had so struck Harry the first time he’d seen Louis writing, and which had encouraged Harry to mentally compare him to Dorothea Brooke contemplating an Italian statue.

Harry can see now that Louis is tapping a stubby pencil lightly against his notebook and constantly shifting his weight on the stone wall. Perhaps he really is worried that Harry’s a forgotten student. Louis is wearing the same brown leather jacket he’d had at the Grimoire, but Harry can tell now how worn it is at the elbows, and that the left cuff is frayed, as though Louis likes to worry at it.

And something about that ragged cuff jolts Harry out of the odd state of dreamy dissociation he’d fallen into, after seeing Louis sitting by the river.

He widens his eyes in false dismay. “You mean you don’t remember me? But your lecture changed my life.”

Louis’ face falls, but Harry’s twitching mouth must give him away, because an instant later, Louis is screwing his face up into comical levels of indignation.

“Oh my God, you’re totally fucking with me, aren’t you. I was two seconds away from flinging myself into the river to escape this awkward situation! You’d have been responsible for a drowning!”

“I’d probably have dove in after you,” Harry assures him, but he’s cackling.

“ _Probably_?” Louis repeats, frowning up at Harry with mock suspicion. “Who’re you, then, that you’re so confident in your water-rescue skills?”

“Harry.” He gives Louis his most innocent, dimpled grin. “And for future reference, I’m a rubbish swimmer. We likely would’ve died.”

“I’m Louis. And lucky for you, I’m great at swimming.” Louis pauses for a beat, leaning forward and shading his eyes from the sun with one hand, the better to give Harry a slow smile, partially shadowed and all trouble. “Y’know. For future reference.”

Harry feels his own face go hot, and his mind temporarily blanks on a flirty retort. Louis leans back again, breaking the tension that’s built between them, expression changing like quicksilver back into friendly amusement. He plays with his fringe, another unconscious, perpetual motion mannerism, as he tilts his head up at Harry.

“Okay, so if you’re not a student, why’d you—” he gestures around at the secluded stretch of the river they’re both inhabiting, and Harry suddenly feels the extreme awkwardness of their respective positions – Louis sat on a ledge, clearly in the middle of something, and Harry hovering over him – only made more so by the fact that Harry has no excuse at all for approaching him.

“Erm.” Harry fumbles for an answer. “I thought—I wondered– Are you sketching?” He nods toward the notebook in Louis’ hands, grabbing onto the excuse with intense relief.

“Ah, no,” Louis laughs. His blue eyes crinkle at the edges. “I’m not keen on torture, so I’d rather leave the visual arts, at least, to someone else.”

Harry picks up on the implication immediately, almost breathless with the pleasure of learning it.

“But you _are_ some kind of artist?”

“Unfortunately,” Louis agrees, comfortably, like it’s a joke he’s used to making. “Plato would call me thrice removed from the truth, although sometimes I think _thrice_ was rather generous.” He must register Harry’s confusion, because he laughs again and tilts his notebook so that Harry can see the messy scrawl that covers its pages. “I’m a poet.”

 _Oh_ , Harry thinks again. Just like the first time he saw Louis sitting on this very embankment, it’s like something has slotted itself neatly into place. He doesn’t realize he must have made the noise aloud until Louis gives him a somewhat ironic smile and says, shuffling over to give Harry space beside him: “You sound like someone who doesn’t know many poets.”

“No, actually.” Harry rushes to sit down and to explain, at the same time, with the result that he manages to trip over both. Only Louis’ quick hand gripping his elbow saves him from going headfirst into the water and requiring that water rescue after all. “I’m a poet as well.”

Something shifts in Louis’ eyes then. The mask of slightly humorous self-deprecation slips away, and what remains instead is a more genuine warmth, like the sun sparkling off the nearby water.

“Oh? And how’s the poetry-as-well business working out for you, Harry?” At first, Harry suspects another joke, but one look at Louis’ face is enough to dispel that idea. His sharp blue eyes are riveted intently on Harry’s, something suspended in his body language that suggests he’s trying to hold back a cascade of further questions.

Harry tries not to glow too visibly under Louis’ attention.

“Not as lucrative as I was promised,” Harry laughs. “Pretty much the only people who want to read my stuff is my Writing Circle, and they’re, like, _obligated_.”

“You’re in a writing group?” Harry can’t quite parse the look that comes over Louis’ face then. Like he’s scanning Harry for any evidence of demonic possession marked onto his skin. Or perhaps a tail.

“Aren’t you?” Harry asks in a small voice. He _must_ be, Harry thinks rather desperately. Their love is _fated_.

But Louis gives an odd laugh, and shakes his head. “Reckon I’d be sacked if I tried anything like that. Or put on forced medical leave. I have a bit of a…reputation, I s’pose you’d call it.”

And now the obvious conclusion – suppressed ruthlessly until now by Harry’s own assumptions about the kind of person Louis must surely be – is pressing itself insistently on Harry’s attention.

“You work at the university? Hang on, are you _Lewis Tomlinson_?”

Louis scrunches his nose and sticks his tongue out, just a bit, the gesture both inadvertent and well-practiced. Harry hates that even in the midst of watching all his illusions shatter into tragic pieces at his feet, he still has the mental wherewithal to find the expression adorable.

“ _Lou-ee_ ,” Louis corrects, even as he watches Harry’s face carefully. “You had it right the first time. But I’ve realized that once a lot of people decide how your name sounds, there’s not much you can do to change their minds. Not a fan, I take it?”

“I read your website,” Harry says, before he can think to censor himself, and Louis nods sharply. They both know what Harry’s implying: Harry had read his anonymous work, but stopped when Louis started publishing as himself.

“Well, I don’t write for other people,” Louis says airily. It sounds almost like a non-sequiter, but Harry hears the underlying, pointed sting in it. It’s the common criticism of Spirtualist poetry: that it’s less original because it’s written in a group, and for a purpose.

“Of course, it’s all _strictly_ for yourself,” Harry retorts. “Being famous seems like _such a chore_.”

It’s not entirely fair, but somehow Harry can’t stop himself. It’s just…they’d met _four times_ , and Harry had been _so sure_.

“What’s that supposed to--” Louis starts, and then cuts himself off with a frown. He takes a deep breath and directs another one of those sharp, scrutinizing glances Harry’s way.

“Look,” he finally continues, with a blunt pragmatism that nevertheless comes across as sympathetic, as though he regrets in advance the fact that his words are about to hurt. “I do understand, why people become Spiritualists. Why they want to believe in magic. And if it gives someone comfort—”

Harry scoffs. “You don’t understand anything about it.” He’s horrified to realize that he’s close to tears, and he worries that Louis must realize it too – which of course only horrifies Harry further. He sets his jaw and stares out at the river. He’ll just take one moment to collect himself, so he doesn’t embarrass himself even more thoroughly, and then he’s going to go make Niall cuddle him until he feels less miserable. He won’t even complain when Niall inevitably says “I told you so.”

But then Louis – the utter _wanker_ – ruins all of Harry’s plans by saying, in an odd voice: “You could try explaining it?”

Harry glances over at him, shocked, but Louis just gives Harry a small smile and a shrug in return, as though even _he’s_ not sure why he suggested it.

“Except, maybe, in a pub?” Louis continues, tilting his head up to the sky with a laugh, and that’s when Harry realizes that since he sat down, it’s actually started drizzling rather steadily. There’s rain trickling down his face; he hadn’t even noticed. The sun is still shining, even through the rain, and Harry wonders if they might get a rainbow.

“Think if you get me drunk, you’ll win this argument?” he retorts, struggling to his feet and watching Louis do the same. Louis laughs and shakes his head.

“Trust me, I think _I’m_ the one who’ll need to be drunk to win this argument.”

There’s a pub they both know a few streets over, warm and relatively quiet in the afternoon, with rickety dark tables. Harry and Louis squeeze into one, pints at their elbows.

And before Harry knows it, he’s sloshing the remainder of his third pint around for emphasis, and Louis’ eyes are crinkled almost entirely shut from laughter, his cheeks flushed and his movements becoming increasingly loose. He’d taken off the brown jacket the moment they’d sat down, to reveal a bright red button-up that Harry’s eyes keep catching on, every time Louis makes an expressive hand gesture.

“Hang on, so you’d really write off the Brontës?” Harry is saying, intent on the argument and _certainly_ not on the fact that Louis’ collar is a bit scrunched on one side, and it would be so easy for Harry to just reach out to flatten it, and let his fingers linger on Louis’ skin — “Or Byron and the Shelleys? Or the Inklings? Or H. D. and T. S. Eliot and everyone else who wrote for _The Egoist_ in the 1910s? Or _Tennyson_ , for God’s sake. Given your our own pseudonym, you must know—”

“ _Please,_ ” Louis scoffs. “It’s not like Tennyson ever believed—”

“Yeah, because the Poet Laureate was really going to admit to…what did George Eliot call it? ‘Silly Lady Poetry?’” Harry interrupts right back, jabbing his pint glass into Louis’ face. “There’s a reason the Brontës adopted male pseudonyms and pretended to be from London – do you really think they would have been published at all, if anyone thought they were _provincial_ enough to believe in magic?” Harry hates that accusation. He heard it often enough himself at Oxford, that he can’t resist giving the word a slightly bitter twist, now.

“They might’ve had other reasons besides magic,” Louis says abruptly, and suddenly neither of them seem to be having much fun with this conversation. Harry finds himself standing and shoving back from the table, frowning down at a shocked Louis.

“Look, I still don’t know why you asked me here, but whatever it was, it doesn’t seem to be working.”

“Wait, I’m—” Louis makes as if to reach for him, but a restless energy is filling Harry’s body, and he shies away from Louis’ hand. Whenever Harry looks at Louis, it’s like looking at slightly different images superimposed on top of each other: the man Harry had seen by the river, silent and blissful, and the man with the shadows of a badly lit pub on his face as he teases and laughs and pokes holes in all Harry’s best arguments. He can’t disentangle these visions of Louis now, and he doesn’t even know whether he wants to try.

“It’s not like we know each other,” Harry realizes aloud, and something about his expression must look _awful_ , because Louis’ face softens in concern, and he makes another aborted move in Harry’s direction. It’s another snapshot to be added to the others.

“Sorry, I have to—” Harry explains, with a complex hand gesture of his own, one that could mean anything from “have a nervous breakdown on my best friend’s ottoman” to “milk a cow,” although hopefully Louis doesn’t jump to either of those options first.

The last thing Harry sees before he turns and flees is the way Louis’ face looks when it’s creased up in worried confusion.

The moment Harry slams the door of the pub, he regrets it. And not only because he’s now stuck on the pavement in the rain. In the time they’ve been in the pub, it’s turned torrential and is currently working its inexorable way into Harry’s collar and down his neck. Harry hesitates in front the pub, foolishly wondering if Louis will chase after him, but after five minutes of nobody exiting the pub but three drunk undergraduates and two bearded old men who give him very suspicious looks as they pass, Harry’s forced to give that up as just another fantasy.

He wheels around toward his flat and makes it four steps before he’s hit by the memory of the softness of Louis’ voice when he’d asked Harry to explain magic. Harry’s feet stutter to a halt. He turns back toward the pub; and now it’s the memory of Louis’ mocking laughter, his condescension, that stops him in his tracks. He can’t quite make the pieces of Louis fit together, and he worries he’ll be trapped here on this extremely damp pavement until he solves it. Harry continues to vacillate, feeling his sense of odd claustrophobia rising with every aborted attempt to make a choice one way or the other.

A passerby jostles his shoulder as they pass, and suddenly it’s like the spell has been broken.

“Sod this,” Harry mumbles, and stalks back toward the pub before he can change his mind. Louis is sitting at the same table where Harry had left him fifteen minutes prior. He’s staring into the dregs of his pint with a faraway look. Harry makes a beeline for him.

Louis finally glances up when Harry’s only a few paces away, eyes widening at the sight of him. Harry feels caught by the look and he forgets whatever he’d been intending to say – but somehow he’s still advancing on Louis.

“Harry, are you alright?” Louis asks, rising from his seat and reaching out to catch Harry before he crashes into him. “You’re completely soaked—mmf!”

Harry lets his momentum carry him forward, right through Louis’ hesitant grip on his arms, and into a kiss. Louis’ fingers clench against Harry’s forearms in surprise, before his hands slip around to pull Harry closer, and he barely pauses before returning the kiss with enthusiasm.

It starts fairly chaste, but it’s like all the nerve endings in Harry’s body have relocated to those few centimeters of skin that Louis’ lips and fingertips are touching, extra warm against Harry’s rain-drenched body, so that even the light, playful way that Louis catches Harry’s bottom lip sends his entire body sparking with overwhelmed sensation. Harry’s finally able to touch the scarlet shirt that had so distracted him earlier, and even _that_ feels softer than it should, like all Harry’s senses are simultaneously sharper and also cocooned by this excess of feeling.

Louis pulls back slightly, and the smile he gives Harry is just as soft as his jumper.

“Resounding victory for the side of magic, well done,” he says a bit hoarsely, his eyes crinkling with amusement. “But as much as I appreciate the conclusion, I may need you to show a bit more of your work, because I’ll confess I’m confused.”

Louis’ smile is kind, but Harry nevertheless feels the mortification overtake him in a wave.

“Oh, you’re right—I don’t know why I—” Harry stutters, pulling away from Louis for the second time that night, but Louis holds up his hands to cut off Harry’s horror-struck explanation.

“Hey, it’s alright! _Very_ alright, actually, but are _you_ alright? It’s just, you ran out, and you didn’t really seem…alright,” Louis finishes with a wince, and then scrapes a defeated hand down his face. “Get it together Tomlinson, you write words for a living,” he mumbles to himself, just loudly enough for Harry to hear it anyway.

“I don’t know,” Harry repeats helplessly. “I don’t remember _deciding_ to— I just— Oh God, I think I need to run away now.”

“Whatever you think is best,” Louis says, but he’s grinning. “Kudos on the guerilla warfare tactic. Very effective. I’ll just stick around in case you want to circle back for another attack, yeah?”

Harry might legitimately be on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but Louis’ cheeky smile knocks a laugh out of him regardless.

“But seriously, at least go find some warm clothes. You look half-drowned.”

Because _of course_ , Harry’s still completely soaked through from the rain, clothes hanging heavy off his body and hair plastered unattractively against his face. He realizes, miserably, that he’s even created a small puddle on the floor of the pub.

“Right,” Harry mumbles. And, worried that if he stays any longer, something even more embarrassing will happen, Harry squelches away as quickly as he can manage.

When Harry gets out of the pub, the rain has thankfully stopped, but it’s still cold enough that he’s shivering slightly. And he knows he should go home and change his clothes, as Louis suggested, but somehow he can’t quite bring himself to do it. The same sense of restlessness from earlier is starting to creep over him again, and Harry feels like all he wants to do is keep _moving._

For lack of a better direction to choose, he starts off toward the Grimoire, shoving his hands in his pockets and pushing through the cold and damp. He’s just passing by Rivendell when he sees that the shop lights are still on, and on a whim, crosses the road and pushes through the familiar doors.

“So your friend probably thinks I’m a nutter,” is what Harry leads with the moment he’s inside. Liam is in the middle of his closing routine, but he seems remarkably calm about the sudden interruption.

“Who?”

“ _Louis_ ,” Harry says, and Liam blinks at him.

“How d’you know Lou? I didn’t see you at his poetry reading. Were you hiding in the back?”

Harry stares at him, momentarily stymied by how to answer that question. There’s no way he can explain to Liam – the way he’d done with Niall – about destiny and _Middlemarch_.

“I thought we might write together,” is the slightly euphemistic explanation Harry decides to go with, thinking of the notebook that had been in Louis’ hands when Harry had found him by the river.

This, if anything, seems only to shock Liam further.

“With _Louis_?” Liam’s face does something complicated – almost _hopeful_ – and he practically drags Harry further into the shop, shoving him down onto a stool he keeps behind the register and pulling another over for himself. He fixes Harry with a serious, determined look, and waves at him to go on.

“Well, erm,” Harry falters, momentarily at a loss for how to continue. He’d thought his explanation was fairly straightforward, and he’s not sure what more Liam thinks there is to say about it. He finally settles on a heavily redacted version of their conversation in the pub, emphasizing all the reasons Louis gave for thinking Spiritualism is rubbish, and entirely omitting the kiss at the end.

“…what I still don’t understand, though, is why he bothered to argue with me for so long? He’s the one who asked _me._ I was ready to leave it. But we both know his mind was already made up,” Harry concludes the story with a defeated little shrug. “Your friend is just…very confusing, mate.”

Liam, who’s been staring at his lap the entire time Harry has been talking, finally lifts his head to fix Harry with a serious look.

“Harry, I’m going to tell you something about Louis, and me, that Louis likes to forget happened. But _I_ can’t,” Liam says, inexplicably fierce about it.

Liam pauses, takes a shaky breath, and begins to talk.

“We’ve been friends for ages. Since we were really young. Sometimes, Louis was my _only_ friend, and although he always had loads of other mates, I knew I was his best one. When we were in secondary school, though, things started to go a bit wrong. I was getting bullied, and his parents were arguing, and – it was nothing a teenager could really fix, but Louis felt responsible anyway. That’s when he first started writing poetry. I think it was, like, a place for him to hide. He didn’t tell anyone but me, and I was…an idiot, as it turned out. His blog was becoming famous, and I couldn’t really understand why he wouldn’t want _everyone_ to know.”

“You’re the one who told,” Harry can’t help but interrupt as the pieces fall into place. “How everyone learned his name.” Liam glances up at Harry before nodding once in confirmation.

“He always says it wasn’t my fault—and it’s not like I called up _The Sun_ , or anything, I was just careless, but—” Liam pauses and takes a breath. “I think I might’ve ruined his life,” he finally confesses in a low, miserable voice. He can’t seem to look Harry in the eyes.

Harry frowns, thinking about it.

“I mean, I’m sure it wasn’t what he wanted, but then he went to London, and--” Harry stutters to a halt at the look on Liam’s face.

“You don’t get it,” Liam insists, almost like he’s disappointed in Harry for not immediately grasping what he’s been trying to say. “Because of what I did, Louis never learned how to be unguarded with his writing.”

Liam makes his way over to a display that Harry has never noticed before, since it’s right by the register, and usually he and Niall avoid this area of the shop like the plague in an attempt to evade capture. But Harry sees now that there’s a small shelf of poetry there, topped by one of Liam’s signature handmade display signs. This one says “Louis Tomlinson, Friend of Rivendell!” in glitter-speckled silvery letters. Something about the sight of it causes Harry to inhale sharply – whether because of Liam’s lopsided exclamation point, or his stubborn inclusion of Louis’ work in Rivendell, Liam’s own best approximation of a magical space.

“Here,” Liam says, turning slightly to hand him one of the books from the shelf. “Try to see what I do, when I read it.”

Harry accepts the book and leaves soon after, rather dazed by everything that’s happened to him in such a short span of time.

He barely makes it back to his flat before he’s opening the book Liam gave him, unable to contain his curiosity for any longer. And he realizes almost immediately what Liam meant. Louis’ poetry is beautiful but elusive, a mirror reflecting the world, leaving the writer protected. His style is smoother and more practiced than it had been when he was writing anonymously, and more fragile for all that. It has no anchor.

And Harry suddenly sees their conversation about magic in a different light. Louis had laughed off the idea that poetry could have a grander purpose beyond lovely language, but he’d also struck up a conversation with the first complete stranger who identified himself as a fellow poet, and had been willing to pursue that conversation past all bounds of politeness. Perhaps Liam was right, and Louis has been writing alone for too long.

Harry reads Louis’ poetry collection cover to cover that night. And then, he flips the book back over and reads it through again.

***

Harry is scheduled to open the Grimoire the next day, so he arrives at the shop early that morning, his mind still whirling with everything he’d read the night before. He’s so distracted, he almost misses the fact that when he tries his key in the shop door, it swings open, already unlocked.

“Niall?” Harry calls. It’d be unusual for Niall to arrive at the Grimoire earlier than Harry, but he can’t imagine why else the door would be open.

The shop is silent, with that palpable hush of a space that’s completely deserted.

And that’s when Harry sees the register. It’s clearly been forced open, the money tray hanging crookedly out of it, like whoever broke it had been in too much of a hurry to be careful. The drawers underneath the counter are also pulled open, stacks of order forms and other paperwork strewn all over the floor.

Harry blinks, unable to process the sight for a long minute, before he pulls out his phone with a shaking hand.

“Hazza?” Niall says groggily, once he’s finally picked up his phone. “Thought you were opening today…’s _so early_.”

“I think someone—” Harry tries not to let his voice tremble, but he’s not sure that he succeeds. “Someone’s broke into the Grimoire. There’s stuff everywhere, and I—” Harry blinks rapidly, feeling lost, but luckily Niall seems to grasp the situation quickly, for all that he was recently woken from a dead sleep.

“Are you safe? They’re not still there, right? Wait, don’t check! Call the police first, yeah? I’ll be right there.”

Niall arrives at roughly the same time the police do, tumbling out of a cab breathless and half-dressed. Harry has been hovering out on the pavement. He’s been strangely unwilling to wait in the Grimoire; he hates that the odd nooks and hiding places that helped make the Grimoire into one of his favorite places have now transformed it into something sinister. But Niall barrels right in, like he’s forcibly wresting back ownership of the space, and Harry feels the some of the new shadows of the Grimoire lighten in his presence.

One of the first things they notice is that the till is empty. They don’t keep much money there overnight, but whatever they did leave is now demonstrably gone. The two police officers who have responded to Harry’s call each make a note of this fact, and ask whether anything else is missing, in the kind of rote tone of voice that suggests they already assume the answer is “no.” Harry can’t blame them: none of their books are really valuable enough to interest a thief, even if they’d known what kind of thing to look for. But Niall seems to take the question seriously, poking all over the shop while the two officers shift restlessly by the door.

“Someone’s been in the office,” he announces, popping back up next to Harry with the results of his impromptu inspection. The police officers perk up visibly at this new development, but Harry has been into the office too. At the best of times, walking into that room is like being at the epicenter of a paper explosion, and Harry has no idea how, if it _had_ been tossed by thieves, Niall could even _tell._ When he suggests this, Niall just shakes his head.

“I just can,” he says enigmatically, but the police are already slouching back toward disinterest, and they leave soon after with a halfhearted vow to contact Niall and Harry if they make any progress on the case. Niall waits, oddly tense, for them to be gone, before whirling to face Harry.

“I think this was about Arthur Addison,” he blurts out. “I think the same people who murdered him broke into the shop looking for something, and they stole the money from the register to cover their tracks.”

Harry’s immediate reaction is to scoff – to tell Niall that the shock of having their shop robbed has made him paranoid – but Niall looks so earnest that Harry forces himself to consider the possibility.

“If this has something to do with whatever Addison was working on, why break into our shop?” he finally says. “He didn’t have a chance to talk with you. And anything he might’ve brought to Oxford got burned up by the fire in his hotel room.”

“Not…everything,” Niall says slowly, and pulls something out of his pocket. It’s a scrap of paper that looks oddly familiar, and when Niall holds it toward him, Harry realizes why. It’s the note that Arthur Addison had written and handed to Harry, to give to Niall. Harry recognizes the messy scribble of old notes that Addison had written his address over.

“I must have put it down in our office and forgotten to throw it out, and then it got covered over with loads of other papers. It’s small enough, and it really could be anything – I think the thieves missed it entirely.”

“O-kay,” Harry starts, still unwilling to buy wholeheartedly into Niall’s theory. “But we already know his address, so why would it matter?”

“What if this—” Niall points to the smudged, partially obscured notations, “—is what they were really after? Think about it, Harry, it’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s the only thing of Addison’s we have.”

“So you think it’s, like, a code?” Harry muses, intrigued despite himself. He looks closer at the note. He can make out a column of numbers, although Addison’s address creeps over a few of them, as though he’d scribbled it down in a hurry without thinking about how much space it would take up. But if Harry squints and tries to ignore the overlayed penstrokes, the numbers end up looking something like this:

132-9-2

218-41-13

233-1-2

67-24-13

51-13-5

They almost look like phone numbers or dates, except that neither of those make sense given the actual numbers there, and Harry can’t think of anything else they could possibly mean.

“They just look like random numbers,” he finally says, and Niall frowns down at the numbers as though they’ve betrayed him by not immediately offering themselves up as a clue.

“They can’t be. This is the only thing we have,” he repeats. “And clearly whoever broke into the Grimoire believes we’re holding onto _something_ important. What else could it be?”

“Okay, but whatever it was, Addison was _murdered_ for it,” Harry reminds Niall sharply.

“I know that,” Niall retorts calmly. “But whatever they’re looking for, they clearly didn’t find it. They don’t have any reason to murder us.”

“There’s never a reason for _murder_ , Niall!”

“I’m just _saying_ —”

“Yeah, look, d’you want me to sleep at your flat tonight or not?” Harry interrupts.

“…Maybe.”

***

The fifth time Harry meets Louis Tomlinson, their encounter is inaugurated by a shout and a splash. Harry is floating down the river lazily in a rented single-person rowboat. He’d hoped that the water would prove peaceful, a way to clear his mind. Neither he nor Niall have had any luck with the code Arthur Addison left – they still can’t even be sure it really _is_ a code – and Harry swears he’s started dreaming in numbers.

It’s an uncharacteristically sunny day today, and so the river is crowded with tourists and students alike. It creates an audible hum of activity, and Harry’s had to concentrate hard on avoiding other boats. It hasn’t exactly offered the opportunity for serene meditation that he’d envisioned when he’d set off for the river.

In fact, the river is noisy enough that by all rights, Harry shouldn’t have heard either the cut-off shout or the small splash, but he does. Something about them cuts through the ambient sounds of the river and seems… _wrong_. Harry scans the river and its banks, and _there_ —a familiar notebook, left abandoned on the river wall, and an equally familiar person surging out of the water, cursing.

Harry watches as Louis Tomlinson bobs in the river. He turns toward the wall he’d fallen from, realizes he’s about a meter too far below the edge of the wall to pull himself up by hand, and curses some more. Harry is snickering by the time he manages to pull his boat up alongside Louis’ disgruntled form.

“One water rescue, as promised,” Harry calls. Louis blinks up at him for several seconds, water streaming off his fringe and down his face, as though he’s struggling to process the sight of Harry appearing so suddenly before him.

“I suppose this was all a spell of some sort, was it?” Louis finally calls back, and despite the fact that _he’s_ the one treading water and _Harry’s_ the one in a boat, he sounds as poised as if he’d planned the whole thing himself. “The Magical Forces teaching me a lesson?”

And maybe it’s the trailing branch that has gotten caught in Louis’ hair, or the fact that Harry’s now read his poetry, but Louis’ flippany about magic, which had felt so hurtful days ago, now feels more like a shared joke between them.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Harry retorts solemnly, as he reaches into the water to help Louis clamber into the boat. As with everything else he’s done, Louis manages it with a grace that seems deeply unfair under the circumstances. He barely even flops over the side at all, when Harry knows perfectly well that _any other person_ getting hoisted into a boat ends up rolling into it like a beached whale.

“Best not antagonize me, in the future,” Harry continues. “Who knows what other bodies of water you might end up in.” Louis swipes his dripping fringe out of his face. Somehow – again _, unfairly_ – the river water glistens on his skin and brings out the blue in his eyes, so that when he grins back at Harry, it’s like the force of his personality is literally sparkling in the sun.

“I did have a rather upsetting run-in with a puddle the other day,” Louis agrees, trying to look grave. “Your work as well?”

“Naturally,” Harry sniffs. “And I hope you learned your lesson.”

Louis stretches out on the other end of the small boat, tipping his head toward the sun in such a vivid echo of the first time Harry saw him, that Harry feels his own heart give an odd stutter in his chest. Harry lets the boat float aimlessly down the river, only using the oars when it’s absolutely necessary to avoid capsizing rogue undergraduates. Both Harry and Louis are quiet for a long moment, but finally Louis squints one eye open and tilts his head up toward Harry.

“So are we ever going to talk about the fact that you kissed me? Or are we pretending it never happened?” Harry tenses up instantly, and Louis raises one placating hand. “I’m game for either option, to be clear, I just prefer to get some sort of spoiler warning for my awkward conversations, before I accidentally stumble into the middle of one.”

Harry ducks his head away from Louis, not willing to let Louis see how easily he’s made Harry smile.

“Who’s pretending?” Harry finally retorts.

“Dunno, Cinderella. You didn’t exactly make it easy to schedule a heart-to-heart. The best I could do was Google you. Harry Styles. Proprietor of the Grimoire Bookshop.”

“You Googled me?” Harry echoes. He wonders if he should be concerned about that, but instead he’s oddly complimented that Louis had tried to find him at all, after their conversation in the pub.

“Just evening the score,” Louis notes, voice light, but Harry feels chastened nevertheless. It’s true that he’s probably found much more online about Louis than Louis could ever hope to find on him.

“Sorry,” Harry allows. “But in that case, I probably shouldn’t tell you that I read your book. I dunno how you’d choose to take your revenge.”

Louis sits up so abruptly that it wobbles the boat.

“Oh God, you did?”

“I liked it,” Harry assures him, and at Louis’ narrow, disbelieving look, he laughs. “I did! Dunno why you’re worried about my opinion, anyway. Everyone thinks you’re brilliant.”

Louis shrugs, and there’s something almost vulnerable about the hunch of his shoulders, even as his tone of voice is perfectly light and teasing: “Yeah, but if other people don’t like my poetry, they just write horrible things in the London Review of Books or something, but if _you_ disapproved, you’d probably find a way to…dump a bucket of water over my head. You’re the one I’m really afraid of.”

Harry can’t stop the loud cackle of laughter from bursting out of him. He immediately flushes, but Louis just leans back against the side of the boat with faint smile.

“How’d you get ahold of a copy so quickly anyway? Don’t tell me your little anti-establishment bookshop stocks my poetry.”

Harry laughs. “You only think it’s anti-establishment because you’ve met Niall. He thinks J. K. Rowling is funded by the CIA.”

Louis cocks his head and suddenly his face is suffused with delighted understanding. “Oh my God, wait, you’re _Liam’s_ friend, aren’t you.”

“Liam thinks we’re friends?” Harry blurts out, and Louis shakes his head with a rueful grin.

“Well, he never stops complaining about you, which is the surest sign that he adores you. The only thing he complains about more than you is Rivendell itself, if that tells you anything.”

Strangely, that might be one of the nicest compliments Harry’s ever received in his life.

“Did you really replace all his “Rivendell Recommended” stickers with “Danger” warnings?”

“We added our own blurbs to go along with them, too,” Harry says proudly. “Like, ‘Perfect if you want to spend a million pages wallowing in the pointlessness of human existence’ for _Game of Thrones_ , and ‘Read if you love werewolves,’ for _Twilight_. That sort of thing.”

Louis is flat-out giggling now, hiding his mouth behind his hand like he’s embarrassed by it, but his eyes are crinkled and bright with mirth. Harry’d thought the first time he saw Louis would go down as one of his life’s perfect moments, but now he realizes _that_ moment had only seemed perfect because this one hadn’t happened yet.

Louis is sprawled indolently in the bottom of the boat, laughter finally subsiding into something warmer, as he gazes up at Harry with half-lidded eyes, an invitation and a promise. Harry’s breath catches. He unconsciously wets his lips, and then realizes that Louis’ eyes are tracking the motion of his tongue. Louis tips his head up even more, accentuating the delicate lines of his neck, his shoulder, and Harry leans forward just a bit –

And that’s when his phone alarm goes off. Harry straightens up so violently that he nearly knocks an oar into the river, and when he chances a blushing glance at Louis, he remembers that Louis is, ultimately, just a slightly waterlogged almost-stranger sat in a boat.

Harry fumbles to silence the alarm, and coughs.

“It was a reminder, to return the boat rental before the time runs over,” he explains, and Louis give a nonchalant nod. Harry wishes, a little unfairly, that Louis would look at least a _little_ awkward about what Harry’s _certain_ was about to be a kiss, just so he’d know he wasn’t alone in feeling it.

“I should probably recover my notebook and things, from the wall I was on, before a rogue poetry-lover makes off with them,” Louis mentions.

“Is that…usually a problem for you? Poetry thieves?” Harry can’t help but ask. Louis smirks up at him.

“Well, as you’ve informed me, I _am_ a very good poet.”

Harry laughs as he turns the boat back toward the rental dock.

They’ve both disembarked when Louis turns to him and holds out his hand with a demanding waggle of his fingers.

“Is it alright if I get your number before you run off this time, Cinderella?”

Harry flushes with pleasure at the request, and hands over his phone obediently. Louis quickly inputs his own number and then sends himself a text so he has Harry’s, then hands back the phone with a smile.

“Until our next ball,” he says with a gallant little bow, before turning to walk away.

Harry stares at the path he’d taken, smiling to himself, for a long time after Louis has disappeared from view.

***

The two of them text back and forth for the next several days, as Harry and Niall continue to struggle with the strange numbers left by Arthur Addison. They’ve asked Remy and Margaret for help, but neither of them are particularly helpful. Margaret is convinced that the code involves a letter-to-number substitution, and several times in the past week, Harry has come upon her curled in a corner of the Grimoire with balled up notepaper around her as she tries another possible combination.

Remy, who out of all four of them is probably the best at puzzles, has also been the least willing to help solve this one. Harry doesn’t think he’s ever seen Remy so close to murdering someone as when Niall had revealed that the Grimoire had been broken into, perhaps by the same people who had killed Arthur Addison, but “it actually might be a good thing, because it set us onto this code…”

Remy had gone still, and calm, and their consonants had gotten precise and clipped when they’d asked: “Please explain, because it sounds like you just informed me that you’d both been targeted by murderers, but you’re _pleased_ about it.”

Niall – either very bravely or very stupidly – had said, “Yeah, so look at what Hazza and I found,” and waved the now-grubby scrap of paper at Remy. Harry wisely elected to stay silent. Remy stared down the paper fluttering in front of their face as though it were a particularly insulting settlement offer to one of their clients.

“Ah, so I see I was correct the first time, in thinking you’ve both gone _utterly mad_ ,” Remy’s voice had risen to a shout by the end, and both Harry and Niall had winced. “Playing around with… _codes and clues_ like you’re in a Famous Five book, when your lives could _legitimately be in danger_!”

“What else d’you think I should be doing, Rem, cowering in the loft?” Niall had shouted back, and the situation had only really deteriorated from there.

They’d still been going at it when Harry had slunk away to cower in the loft himself, and after that, Remy had flatly refused to indulge any of their code-breaking efforts.

In fact, Harry realizes now, as he cuts through the path alongside Magdalen College on his way back to the Grimoire for their Tuesday night Writing Circle meeting, he hasn’t seen Remy in several days. Harry had assumed they were just missing each other by coincidence, but if Remy has been avoiding the Grimoire – if they haven’t made up with Niall yet – tonight’s meeting is liable to be _unbearable_.

Harry groans softly to himself at the thought, before a sharp bark catches his attention. He glances up to find a stout, red and white bull terrier barrelling towards him, and almost without thinking, Harry dives for the runaway dog just as it tries to dart past him.

There’s a shout of “Legolas!” and then suddenly Louis Tomlinson is puffing up to where Harry’s standing with the dog.

“Thanks for the save, Cinderella.” Despite his red face and droopy fringe, Louis shoots Harry a genuine grin. “Good to know you do all sorts, and not just the aquatic ones.”

“You have a dog?” Harry asks as Legolas lets out another bark and attempts to enthusiastically swallow Harry’s entire hand.

Louis shakes his head. “He’s Liam’s, of course. Who else would name a stumpy little dog ‘Legolas?’”

Harry concedes this very excellent point.

“I was meant to look after him today,” Louis continues, and Harry can see now that he’s holding the frayed fragments of a blue, nylon lead in his hands. “I took him out for a moment, but he slipped his lead. My office is just there.” He nods toward the nearby college building.

Louis knots the lead to Legolas’ collar, and the three of them start walking again in a comfortable silence, punctuated only by Legolas’ curious snuffling.

“Y’know, it’s a funny coincidence that Legolas ran into you,” Louis says suddenly. “Because I was just about to text you. See if you wanted to get another drink. We could find some other topic to shout at each other about? It doesn’t have to be magic; I’m very belligerent, I’ll have you know. Will argue on command.” Louis shoves his hands into the pockets of his familiar battered brown jacket, and glances up at Harry almost shyly. As if Harry was ever going to turn down _Louis_. Except –

“I can’t tonight,” Harry says, and Louis’ face falls rather spectacularly, before he recovers with a nonchalant nod that almost looks real. “Just tonight—” Harry rushes to explain. “I have to meet my Writing Circle.” And maybe it’s a response to Louis’ obvious disappointment, or maybe it’s the creeping anxiety that if Harry turns down Louis tonight, he’ll have missed his chance entirely, but Harry blurts out: “Want to come with?”

Louis’ head shoots up, and he gives Harry an incredulous look. “Thought you were meant to be _rescuing_ me from danger, Cinderella, not putting me in your best friends’ crosshairs.”

“It’ll be fine,” Harry assures him, warming to the idea now, even if he hadn’t exactly thought it through beforehand. It’s not exactly _discouraged_ to bring outside people to meetings, but given that magic is both personal and rather temperamental, it is usually a sign of significant trust. Not that Harry is planning to explain _that_ to Louis. “Might even be fun.”

Harry gives Louis his most persuasive, dimpled smile, and he feels a rush of satisfaction when Louis visibly wavers in the face of it.

“Alright, stop that, or your face’ll freeze that way,” Louis huffs, poking at one of Harry’s dimples. Legolas barks and tugs on his lead a bit, perhaps wondering why they’ve all stopped walking, and Louis glances down.

“I just have to gather my things from my office and return this one to Liam, and then I’ll be there. Unless you want to walk with me?” And there’s that slight edge of uncertainty again.

But Harry jumps eagerly at the suggestion.

Louis’ office, Harry discovers, is large and wood-panelled, with one narrow window to let a half-hearted beam of light into the room. There’s an imposingly dark desk, covered in papers, and, in a clear attempt to be friendly, a comfortable chair for visitors. There are also books everywhere, but in no organizational order that Harry can infer. Harry is no stranger to bibliographic chaos himself, but something about the dissaray feels deliberate, as though Louis has placed each volume carefully despite how it all may appear. It suddenly occurs to Harry to wonder how Oxford’s premier literary celebrity feels about his employer. There’s something almost parodic about this careless collection of leather-bound volumes, as if to signal that this is only the public face of Louis’ poetry. Another type of armor.

Books have never felt that way for Harry, who has always imagined his poetry as roots sinking into the ground, steadying him the further afield they venture. He reckons it’s what makes him so good at plant-based magic, and why it has never felt incongruous to him to fill his living spaces with ferns and novels in equal measure.

As Louis collects his and Legolas’ belongings, Harry’s eye is drawn to a familiar book on Louis’ desk, opened to a middle page as though someone had stopped reading it only moments before. It’s _A Guide to Magical Practice_ , the introductory textbook that Harry himself had learned from.

Louis catches the direction of Harry’s gaze, and flushes.

“Just some light opposition research,” Louis says, avoiding Harry’s eyes. But if anything, seeing the book only confirms for Harry that he’s doing a good thing by inviting Louis into tonight’s Writing Circle.

Next, they make their way to Liam’s nearby flat, and Harry realizes he’s never actually given much thought to where Liam lives. Like a secondary school teacher, or perhaps some sort of guardian gargoyle, Liam seems like he should be inextricably bound to the space of Rivendell. But instead, he apparently lives on the third floor of a normal, if slightly impersonal, block of flats.

Legolas goes absolutely nuts as they approach Liam’s flat, and Liam, perhaps hearing the commotion, swings his door open before they can reach it. He’s already kneeling down to let Legloas jump all over him, but he glances up and beams at the sight of Louis and Harry.

“Didn’t expect to see you, Harry,” Liam says, with all the delight of someone who’s just received an amazing gift, rather than discovered an uninvited guest loitering in his hallway. Harry launches into an explanation of how he’d run into Louis, and invited him to a Writing Circle. At that last bit, Harry glances at Louis from the corner of his eye, suddenly worried that Louis doesn’t want Liam to know, but Louis’ face doesn’t change. He just continues listening intently as Harry’s divided attention causes him to lose track of his own story, and get bogged down in a digression about his childhood neighbor’s dog who used to break into their garden.

“ _Wow_ , Lou, you’re getting to see a Writer’s Circle?” Liam says, a bit wistfully, and…well, Niall is _already_ going to kill Harry for bringing Louis, so…

“You could come too, y’know.”

Liam’s face lights up so instantly and so painfully that Harry can’t bring himself to regret the offer.

Twenty minutes later, Liam and Louis are hovering behind him as Harry pushes open the door to the Grimoire, where they’re immediately greeted by a clamor of voices.

“Haz, Niall’s yelling at me for taking a fantasy fiction class next term—”

“Haz, tell Maggie she’s a traitor to the cause—”

“--when I _know_ he’s got a copy of _Lord of the Rings_ at home—”

“It’s called opposition research--”

At that, Harry snorts and glances backward at Louis, who shoots him a wry, self-deprecating shrug in response.

“It’s a great excuse,” he murmurs. Harry shakes his head, grinning.

“Right, that’s it. Give me back my housekey, you little demon, you’ve abused the privilege—”

Niall lunges for Margaret, who squeals and darts behind a folding chair. Niall tips off his own chair and hits the ground with an “oof” while Margaret dangles her keychain above him tauntingly. Remy, who’s sat in the midst of the fray calmly reading an Assia Djebar novel, finally glances up to greet Harry.

“Oh! Hello.” Remy smiles at Louis, who hasn’t moved from his anxious spot behind Harry’s shoulder. Niall and Margaret finally catch sight of the stranger – and Liam – in their doorway.

“You all know Liam, but this is his friend Louis. I told them they could observe the group tonight, if that’s alright?”

“The mermaid—” Margaret whispers to Niall in delight, before Niall has the presence of mind to elbow her in the side.

“You’ve never brought anyone before,” is what Niall says.

“So? I’m doing it now,” Harry retorts, and tries to tell Niall to _shut up_ with nothing more than his face and some surreptitious hand gestures, but he’s not sure the message gets through. Niall frowns and opens his mouth, probably to continue asking uncomfortable questions, but to Harry’s surprise, Remy saves him.

“You’re Louis Tomlinson, yeah?”

Harry shuts his eyes and blows out a resigned breath. God, this is turning into a _disaster_.

“Erm, yes?” Louis tries. Harry can sense him shifting on his feet behind him. “Look, I’m sorry, clearly you’re not comfortable with this. I’ll just—”

“Hang on,” Remy interrupts, and Harry’s eyes fly open. Remy is looking searchingly, first at Harry and then at Louis, and finally says: “We were just a bit surprised at first, but it’s fine. You’re both very welcome to stay.”

Niall makes a small noise of protest, and Margaret promptly claps a hand over his mouth.

“I’m Margaret Smith,” she beams.

“Oh, I know you! You’re one of Dan Abernathy’s students, yeah?” At her tutor’s name, Margaret’s grin flickers slightly. Louis’ eyes narrow; he’d caught it too. He moves past Harry and into the Grimoire properly, more confident in the space than he’d been only an instant before.

“But you said you’re thinking of Fantasy Fiction? Deborah Barton’s a brilliant lecturer, and she’s got a first edition of _Frankenstein_ that she’ll probably bring into class if you ask.”

“Really?” Margaret’s eyes light up and she starts toward Louis eagerly. “I also need to take another lecture next term, but I can’t decide--” And then she’s off with characteristic Margaretian enthusiasm, which Louis seems to take in stride, nodding seriously as Margaret continues to talk. Harry’s never heard her say so much about her course, and it suddenly occurs to him that she may have felt awkward about it, given how negatively Harry, Niall, and Remy tend to frame their own rather underwhelming careers as Oxford students.

Harry looks around the shop. Niall and Remy are staring at Margaret and Louis as well, Niall suspiciously and Remy oddly pleased. Liam has been remarkably quiet by the door thus far, and when Harry turns to check on him, is startled to realize that Liam is staring directly at him.

 _Thanks_ , Liam mouths, and nods toward the other side of the shop, where Louis is busy telling Margaret that if she sends him her latest assignment, he might be able to give her some advice on the issues with motif that she’s worried about.

Harry’s not sure why he deserves to be thanked for that, but at least everyone seems to be getting along.

The conversation soon shifts. Liam gets dragged into a discussion of fantasy literature with Margaret,. Niall slouches nearby interjecting rude comments about all their choices, while Remy only raises an eyebrow and asks how Niall knows so much, if he never reads it.

Louis, meanwhile, has sidled up to Harry.

“I hope that was alright, earlier, offering to help Margaret with her schoolwork,” Louis murmurs. He shifts anxiously from foot to foot. The low light of the Grimoire has turned his beautiful blue eyes a paler shade of gray, making him look almost ghostly, like he’s half in the Grimoire and half somewhere else.

“Of course,” Harry says, surprised.

“I just…I probably shouldn’t say this about a colleague, but Dan Abernathy is bloody _awful_. If he decides that a student isn’t fully committed to Classical writing methods – which often means, in his mind, anyone who’s queer, students of color, working-class – he basically ignores them. The rest of us try to look out for the students he’s dropped. Offer them some proper feedback on their work, at least.”

“Thank you,” Harry tells Louis fervently. He glances over at Margaret, who’s smiling as she rereads something in her notebook while Liam, Remy, and Niall argue around her.

“It’s quite literally my job,” Louis retorts. “But I know I’m not anyone’s favorite person here, and—”

“Dunno, _I_ fancy you like mad,” Harry blurts out before he can censor himself, and then claps horrified hands over his mouth. “Oh God, I was meant to be cooler about that.”

“No, ‘s alright,” Louis says, mouth twitching like he’s trying to hold back a wider smile. A slight flush has risen on his cheeks. “Since I fancy you a stupid amount, myself.”

“Well. Good,” Harry retorts, and doesn’t bother trying to contain his own grin. Louis glances up at him and their eyes catch, electricity jumping in the gap between them. The tension grows; Harry feels himself swaying forward almost unconsciously. Louis’ eyes track his movement, then flicker down to Harry’s lips and up again, and Harry lets his own mouth part in anticipation.

“So are we going to _do_ any magic tonight?” Remy asks loudly. “Or is the only purpose of this meeting to complain about the Marvel movies?”

“I’m just _saying_ , Thor—” Liam and Niall both start at the same time, and Remy throws up their hands. They stomp over to their seat on the north side of the circle, and sit pointedly down in it. Niall doesn’t miss a beat, continuing whatever furious debate he’s having with Liam over something called _The Dark World_ , even as he retrieves two spare chairs from elsewhere in the shop and sets them up a bit outside the existing circle of four.

It’s enough to prompt the rest of them to find their seats, Harry and Louis sneaking glances at each other as they go.

“Has anyone got something to share?” Niall asks, starting the meeting with his usual question.

“I do,” Remy pipes up, looking unusually reluctant about it. “I’ve actually spent the last week working on a protection spell,” Remy adds. Their voice is perfectly even, but the way their eyes dart toward Niall betrays them.

“Rem, you don’t—” Niall starts, sounding almost confused, but then falters under the heat of Remy’s sudden glare.

“What does that mean, protection spell?” Liam blithely interjects into the awkward silence.

“It’s, erm—” Harry clears his throat, but Niall and Remy appear to be conducting a silent conversation entirely in frowns, so he deems it best to continue the explanation himself. “Well, there are different kinds. Depending on the meter of the poem, they can be tied to a particular person, or a place.”

Harry falters again; he’d never been great at lecturing on magical theory, but Niall and Remy still haven’t rejoined the rest of them.

“Wait, let me go back. How much do you know about the Fundamental Laws of Magic?”

Liam looks confused, but Harry’s pleased to see a spark of recognition light up in Louis’ eyes. So he _had_ been reading the _Guide_ in his office.

“Well, there are a couple, but the two that are important for understanding protection spells are the First and Second, okay? The First Fundamental Law says that magic can’t work on a person without their consent. Usually, that means that for magic to work on you, you either have to be the spellcaster yourself, or present during the casting. The Second Fundamental Law says that magic can’t directly manipulate thoughts or feelings.”

“Because it’s unethical,” Liam nods in understanding.

“Well, no. Maybe? But it’s not just that Spiritualists _won’t_ break the Fundamental Laws. They literally _can’t_. The magic doesn’t work.”

“So how does that relate to Remy’s protection spell?” Louis asks, leaning forward like he’s listening intently.

“Well, the Second Law means the spell won’t fend anyone off, exactly, but it acts a bit like…erm…a defensive Felix Felicis?” Harry tries, confident that Liam at least will understand the _Harry Potter_ reference. “Y’know, it puts luck on your side. Lets you blend into shadows a bit easier, or makes your enemy a bit more noticeable. Some of them can create a sense of foreboding or anxiety in the people who mean you harm, like make them think twice? Like I said, it can’t stop anyone who’s really determined, but it gives you an edge.”

“Okay,” Liam says slowly. “But isn’t, like, noticing things and anxiety all in your brain, too? How is that different from thinking and feeling?”

Harry opens his mouth, at a loss for how to answer. He realizes he’d never thought of that; had just accepted the limits of what magic could and couldn’t do without question. But thankfully, Niall is finally paying enough attention to step in.

“It’s complicated,” he says. “And people aren’t entirely certain how it works. The popular theory right now has to do with the fact that magic works through language, which is intertwined in your brain with higher-order thought. Things like memory, and reasoning, and feelings. But the Third Fundamental Law of Magic – dunno if Harry’s explained that one yet – says that magic can’t work on itself. So the theory goes that magic can work on _some_ things – perception and parts of your nervous system – but the closer you get to cognition and language, the less the magic will work.”

“It’s called ‘attribution of arousal,’” Margaret, who has been listening quietly to Harry’s and Niall’s explanations, finally interjects. “Which _I_ think sounds like something completely different, but nobody asked _me_ before they named it. It basically means that your body feels physical things, like an elevated heart rate or changes in your breathing, and then your brain decides the reasons why. Like, are you afraid, or excited, or attracted to someone? Magic can influence the body stuff, but not your interpretation.”

“That’s…pretty much exactly it,” Niall says, sounding impressed. “But the fact is, people don’t really have a very detailed scientific understanding of how magic works, because for a long time, nobody was studying it systematically _at all_.”

Liam nods seriously like this has all made perfect sense. And also like this has been the absolute _best_ thing he could imagine doing with his Tuesday evening: listening to his weird friends give him an impromptu lecture on magic. Harry glances at Louis, a little afraid that Louis won’t look quite as pleased to be there. But Louis is just biting his lip, staring at the ground. Harry can tell he’s heard it all, but he can’t quite parse what Louis thinks of it.

“Are you going to cast the spell now?” Liam asks eagerly.

“ _Why_ do you need to cast it?” Louis interjects, looking up from his contemplation of the floor at last.

“Oh, you know,” Remy begins breezily, before Niall cuts in.

“Someone’s searching for information that they think we have, which we _don’t_ have, and they’ve already killed someone over it.”

In the ringing silence that follows Niall’s declaration, Niall swivels in his seat to shoot Harry an unexpected wink. Harry can’t quite suppress a disbelieving laugh, despite how inappropriate it probably is to giggle in this moment. After all, this might be the closest thing Niall will ever give him to approval for fancying Louis: trusting him with magical theory and history, all in one night.

Quickly, Niall sketches out the story of Arthur Addison and their own break-in, with occasional interruptions and additions from Remy, Harry, and Margaret.

“This is all rather mad,” Louis says conversationally once Niall is done, and then instantly has to raise his hands to fend off the glares of everyone else in the room. “I’m not saying it’s not _true_ , just that it’s…” He laughs softly and shakes his head. “Mad,” he finally repeats, but it’s enough to prompt the others to relax.

“So that’s why you’ve written a spell?” Liam asks Remy curiously, and Remy nods. “How will it work?”

“I’ve designed it broadly, so if it works properly, it should offer some measure of protection to anyone who’s in the room when it’s cast.”

Liam looks pleased to be included, while Louis has another one of those unreadable expressions on his face. He glances at the spell that Remy hands around the circle, and then does an almost visible double-take before reading it through again, more slowly.

“This is…” Louis starts, and then trails off without seeming to realize it, too enthralled by the contents of the page in his hands. “They’re all like this?”

“Like what?”

“Like…it’s _living_?”

Harry glances at Remy’s poem himself, as the rest of the Writing Circle watch their exchange quietly. Margaret looks as confused as Harry feels by Louis’ choice of descriptor, but Niall and Remy are both nodding at it. Harry realizes that he and Margaret, who both grew up among Spiritualist poets, have never experienced the rush – half-discovery and half-recognition – of finding Spiritualist poetry for the first time. To them, it had always just been what poetry was like.

“It’s like _waves_ , like every word’s a stone dropping into water—” Louis continues, awed. “They all feel like this?” he asks Harry again.

“If they’re done right,” Remy is the one who answers, offering Louis a quirked grin of understanding. “D’you want to see the poem in action?”

“ _Absolutely_ ,” Louis breathes, and hands the page back to Remy.

Niall, Margaret, and Harry run through a handful of checks and edits on the poem Remy’s given them, but Remy’s work is aways impeccable, and none of them have any issues to raise before it’s ready to read.

The moment they start, Harry can feel the power of the spell slam into him. This is no plant magic or half-baked Finding Spell. This is what’s meant when Spiritualists talk about poets being conduits: Harry can feel the spell flowing through him like molten metal being cast into its proper shape.

Distantly, he can see Louis and Liam watching avidly, but for now, it’s all Harry can do to concentrate on holding the spell in his mind and ensuring it’s focused in the proper direction. It’s a long spell, and by the time they’re nearing the end, the words are swimming on the page; Harry grits his teeth and physically _forces_ himself to get out the last few words. The spell releases, like a balloon being tied off, and Harry feels like he’s taking in a full breath for the first time in hours. He finally thinks to look around the room at the rest of the group. Niall looks very pale, Remy has a pinched look on their face and they’re breathing hard, while Margaret is slumped in her chair.

Harry blinks languidly a few times, and then turns to Liam and Louis. They’re both leaning forward in their seats, looking awed, and Harry feels an exhausted spike of satisfation run through him.

“That was…” Louis starts, and then shakes his head as though he doesn’t have the words.

“I could feel it! Look!” Liam shows everyone his bare arm, and when they proceed to stare at it blankly, clarifies: “Goosebumps!”

“Wow,” Louis contributes, eyes wide. “Are you lot alright?”

“Magic always takes something out of you – like, energy or will, you could say – but it’s nothing a good night’s sleep won’t fix.” Niall has slipped into a pedantic tone, but Liam and Louis both nod like they’re fascinated.

When Harry tries to stand, he finds himself swaying on his feet. Louis leaps up to put an arm around his waist before he can fall, and Harry leans gratefully into the strong warmth of him.

“You want me to walk you home?” Louis asks in a low voice.

“Might be good,” Harry admits ruefully.

When they reach Harry’s flat, Louis takes it all in with a bright eagerness: he’s barely deposited Harry on his sofa with a cup of tea before he’s poking into bookshelves and drawers seemingly without shame. Harry thinks about objecting, but he really is very tired, and he also finds, oddly, that he doesn’t actually mind it.

“See anything you like?” Harry waggles his eyebrows.

“You have a lot of novels for a poet,” Louis notes.

“Like I can’t read more than one thing?”

“No, it’s just…interesting. Why these?” Louis gestures at Harry’s Victorian novel shelf – Brontë and Dickens and Eliot – before turning his investigative gaze onto Harry himself. Who folds instantly under its power.

He fidgets, but does his best to explain. “I think it’s because they believe in something. They’re like Spiritualist poetry in that way, and I think…yeah, I think that’s why I like them. It’s like, maybe they believe in me?” Harry flushes. “Sorry, that sounds really stupid, they’re _books_ —”

“No, it doesn’t,” Louis says quietly, coming to sit beside Harry on the couch. “I think books can…make it seem like there’s someone else out there to inspire you, or bolster you, or guide you. When really it’s just…whatever you’re bringing to the text on your own. But maybe, if you’re not ready to believe in everything you’re carrying within you, it helps to place it somewhere outside yourself first. But maybe that’s not what you meant either—” Louis ducks his head, suddenly awkward.

“What makes you so sure of me?” Harry blurts out.

Louis gives him a searching look, and after a short pause, says simply: “The spell tonight. You _believed_ it into existence. I saw you do it. I may not know how I feel about all this – magic, or poetry that’s more than poetry – but I know what I saw. It wasn’t something you could do, if you didn’t believe in yourself, deep down – in your ability to create the things that you think need to exist in the world.”

Louis gives Harry an odd, slightly twisted smile, and Harry frowns back at him.

“Do you? Believe in your own ability to do all that?”

Louis opens his mouth to answer, hesitates, and then gives a little shrug instead.

“It’s less necessary for my type of poetry,” is the non-answer he finally goes with, before making a rather transparent effort to change the subject entirely. And Harry is tired enough that he lets him.

***

The seventh time that Harry meets Louis is the first time it’s planned, and it’s also the first time that Harry stops counting.

Harry had realized, after waking up on his sofa the morning after Louis had walked him home, that he had no memory of Louis actually _leaving_ , and that he’d probably fallen asleep mid-conversation. There was a blanket thrown over him, and the flat had feelt otherwise empty. But Harry had no time to feel embarrassed about this, because he’d noticed with a start that his phone was ringing – probably what had woken him up in the first place.

It was Louis. Harry had felt an involuntary smile spreading aross his face as he’d answered.

“So you got my note?” Louis had said, like he was picking up an earlier conversation.

“No?” But it only took a quick search for Harry to find a Post-It that had fallen into the folds of his blanket.

_While You Were Sleeping, I might’ve looked through your films. A bit. I was Clueless about how tired you were, or I woudn’t have tried to Say Anything last night, but hopefully we can Begin Again in the morning. I’ll call you, yeah?_

_Love, Actually, Louis_

“You couldn’t fit _Bridget Jones’ Diary_ in there too? I thought you were meant to be a writer,” Harry had said, after reading through the note.

“Well, there’s only so long I could struggle through that note before I just became a weirdo lingering too long in a sleeping man’s flat. Figured I should go for the low-hanging fruit this time.”

“‘This time?’ Does that mean I can expect sonnets, later? Something with a bit more effort put into them?”

“Shall I compare thee to _500 Days of Summer_ —” Louis had laughed.

And then had proceeded to ask Harry on a _real_ , honest-to-god date, which had Harry dancing in his seat on the phone, but which Harry is now, naturally, panicking about.

According to Niall, he’d been insufferable the entire afternoon, so lost in thought that he’d ignored Niall calling his name several times, and when their single customer of the day had drifted over for help finding a section, Harry had apparently sent them off in completely the wrong direction. After several hours of this, Niall had sent him home in disgust, where Harry had spent the remaining time before their date rearranging his bookshelves and accidentally drowning a fern.

It was really best for everyone that 7pm arrived when it had.

Now, Harry loiters outside the pub Louis has chosen for their date, feeling oddly nervous. It’s not like he and Louis haven’t already spent quite a bit of time together – also at a pub, no less, although Harry hopes they won’t be recreating that experience tonight. For one thing, if he gets the chance to kiss Louis again, he is _absolutely_ planning to stick around for the aftermath.

He adjusts his jumper, abruptly self-conscious about its vibrant pink and green pattern, and wishes he’d chosen something both cooler and sexier. Maybe with some buttons he could sultrily undo when the situation required it? Wow, Harry wishes he’d considered earlier how _utterly impossible_ it is to make a wool jumper look sultry _in any way._

How did he _ever_ manage to pull in uni, he’s clearly hopeless at this, maybe he should—

“Harry, hi!” Louis appears in front of him, pink-cheeked and a bit breathless, hair artfully disheveled. He’s wearing his everpresent brown leather jacket, with a deep blue button-down ( _see?_ _Buttons!_ ) that brings out the brilliant color of his eyes, and he’s giving Harry this dazed little smile like _Harry_ is the one blowing _his_ mind right now, and Harry wonders exactly how quickly he can rush them through the “food eating” and “in public” portions of this date…

But then Louis gestures at the pub sign, which reads “The Fox and Book,” and gives him a shy look like he’s waiting for Harry’s approval of his choice, and Harry thinks Louis could probably get him to agree to whatever he wanted tonight, even if all he wanted to do was sit at this pub in silence for hours.

“I pass by here nearly every day, on the way to my office,” Louis explains. “I always wondered if it was named after the bookstore in _You’ve Got Mail_. Fox Books, yeah? When I saw the film in your flat the other night, I thought of it. But if you’d rather--” Louis’ usual breezy tone stutters to an uncertain halt.

“No.” Harry grins at him. “It’s amazing. Although for the proper _You’ve Got Mail_ experience, it should’ve been a blind date.”

“I can pretend not to recognize you, if you’d like?” Louis laughs. “Although if we’re already resorting to the whole strangers-at-a-bar roleplay to spice up our first date…”

“Excuse me, this is _not_ our first date! What do you call the time I kissed you? Or the time I rescued you from a river?”

“You have a very loose definition of the word ‘date.’”

“’M just saying, this could _technically_ be considered a third date…”

Louis’ gaze goes heated, and Harry feels himself flushing under Louis’ suddenly rather predatory scrutiny.

“ _I’m_ considering it a chance to spend time with you, and probably embarrass you with excessive compliments, maybe share a dessert – when neither of us have been previously drenched in water. A number’s not gonna change any of that for me.”

“Oh,” Harry ducks his head to hide a thoroughly charmed smile. But he also can’t resist teasing: “I just meant, a third date is definitely “spice up with roleplay” territory. That’s what the Third Date Rule means, everyone knows that.”

Louis lets out a bark of laughter. “And how do your third dates usually go, then?”

“Apparently, people don’t take as well to impromptu piracy scenarios as you’d think,” Harry grins.

Louis slips his hands into his trouser pockets and rocks on his heels as he considers the situation with slightly narrowed eyes. “Well, if the spark is already dead, there’s nothing for it. Go on, then.” He nods at the pub door. “I’ll meet you at the bar.”

Harry grins and turns on his heel, unwilling to give Louis the chance to reconsider.

“But if you put on a hook hand, I’m walking out,” Louis calls after him.

Harry does as Louis suggested, finding an empty space at the bar and ordering an elaborate cocktail. He’s sipping on the straw when he senses a presence at his side. It only takes a small tilt of his head to see Louis, standing just behind him with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“This seat taken?”

“Sorry, yeah. I’m waiting for a mysterious penpal. No chance you’re him?”

“Impossible. I never write anything down,” Louis tells him blithely as he slides onto the barstool beside Harry. “More a man of action, myself.”

“You think they’re mutually exclusive?” Harry is momentarily distracted from their game by his own genuine curiosity.

Louis blinks, startled into what Harry suspects is a more truthful answer than he might have given otherwise. “Aren’t they?”

“Of course not,” Harry scoffs. “How d’you think Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks fell in love?”

“Their script?” Louis points out, but he’s leaning his elbow on the bar so he can better see Harry’s face. There’s a wrinkle of concentration between his eyebrows.

“Yeah. More writing.” Harry can’t help but laugh at the way Louis huffs a breath and ostentatiously turns his head away to order a beer from the bartender.

“I liked you better when you were pretending not to know me.” Louis groans, once he’s taken a generous drink from his newly poured pint.

“No you didn’t,” Harry retorts, smugly certain of it. Louis offers him a confirmation in the form of a tiny grin.

“No. I didn’t.”

The rest of the date feels like it flies by, whether it’s because he’s enthralled by Louis’ stories about his siblings, or teasing him about his strangely snobby television taste, or – Louis’ prediction was correct – becoming thoroughly embarrassed by all the ways Louis finds to call him “lovely.” Soon they’re finishing their dessert – shared, again as promised – and Louis is giving him a warm smile.

“So, verdict? No need to resort to piracy to make this date interesting?”

“Apparently not. But you could still board my vessel...” Harry waggles his eyebrows, and Louis actually stops dead to stare at him.

“Styles, I gotta tell you, your seduction methods could use some work,” Louis says, but he also slips his hand through Harry’s to tug him in the direction of Harry’s flat. When he turns halfway back around to make sure Harry’s following, Harry can see the way his eyes are dancing. “But if the pirate thing is really what does it for you, I can probably work around it. I’ll gladly raise your Jolly Roger. Give you a scabbard for your cutlass. Let your cannons blow a—”

“Oh God,” Harry laughs. “I had no idea what I was getting into with you.”

“Hey, don’t start something you can’t finish.” Louis shrugs easily and swings Harry’s hand a bit as they walk along the pavement. His hand is smaller than Harry’s, oddly delicate, but he guides Harry easily through the crowd of other pedestrians with tantalizingly light presses of his fingers that only make Harry want to grip harder. To hold on and not let go.

Harry turns toward Louis, another piracy pun on the tip of his tongue, but then he falters with a frown. He could swear that was Elaine – their former Writing Circle member – walking along the opposite pavement, but when he tries to give her a little wave, it’s almost like she turns her head deliberately away to avoid acknowledging him.

Is she still annoyed with them over the Arthur Addison journals? The man _is_ dead, and Harry thinks that should render any grudge rather moot, but then again, he also doesn’t totally understand why anyone would find it useful to break into the Grimoire, so it’s clear there’s _something_ about the situation he’s missing.

“All right?” Louis asks, noticing that Harry’s mind has wandered away from their conversation.

“Yeah, just…thought I saw someone I knew, but maybe it wasn’t even her,” Harry says, and forces himself to pay attention to the only person he actually _wants_ to be thinking about right now.

Louis steers the conversation to light, random things as they walk, but every so often his thumb will brush Harry’s palm – just a soft whisper of a _suggestion_ of a touch – and every nerve in Harry’s body will light up like Louis is stripping right there on the pavement. Maybe because it’s the only place they’re touching, that makes every shift of their hands feel magnified, the focus of all Harry’s desperate attention.

Harry has no idea what the two of them are currently talking about. The best he can do is fill in Louis’ gaps with increasingly flustered noises of interest, and judging by the heated looks Louis has started shooting him, Louis has realized it too.

“Harry…” Louis murmurs in a low voice that sends a wave of arousal through Harry’s body. His eyes are dark and fixed intently on Harr, who can’t suppress a shiver at the thought of what all that concentrated attention could _do_ if given half-a-chance.

“Here!” Harry blurts out gratefully. “At my flat, I mean. My flat is here. Where we are also.”

Louis barely blinks, only the slight curl at the edges of his smile suggests that he’d heard any of Harry’s desperate stammering.

“Permission to come aboard, Captain?” Louis asks, while giving a Harry a heated once-over like he really is formulating a plan of attack. A catalogue of all the places he wants to touch. His eyes drag from Harry’s face, down his chest and to his thighs, then back up to his mouth, where they linger, calculating angles of approach.

 _Oh God, that line_ really _shouldn’t work…_

“We’re going to end up have pirate sex at some point, aren’t we.” Harry can’t be fussed, not when Louis could be wearing a Captain Hook costume and he’d _still_ find a way to make it the sexiest thing Harry’d ever seen.

“Seems an inevitability, yeah,” Louis says cheerfully. “You gonna invite me in, or do I have to scale some sort of rigging?”

“Oh! Yeah,” Harry fumbles with his keys, getting increasingly flustered the more tries it takes him to fit them into the lock. But Louis just smiles at him, softer now, and leads him to his door, and into his bedroom, like Louis is already familiar with the space. He stops when he sees the number of plants in Harry’s bedroom, and turns to Harry with a bright laugh.

“Feels like we’re being perved on by a voyeuristic arboretum.”

“Nah, they’re discreet,” Harry assures him, and Louis laughs again before leaning forward and ( _finally!_ ) kissing Harry again.

It’s slow, this time, inherently more deliberate than their first unplanned kiss in the pub, but slower even than Harry’d expected, given that five minutes ago, Louis had been undressing Harry fairly shamelessly with his eyes. But Louis is taking his time now, mapping out Harry’s mouth with an intent, heated focus. Firm, and careful, and irrefutably in control. His hand reaches up to cradle the back of Harry’s neck, slipping his fingers into the wispy curls there, and Harry can’t help his needy little moan, nor the way he grabs at Louis shoulders to urge him along.

Harry can feel Louis’ smile against his mouth, as he skims the fingers of his other hand along the sensitive skin of Harry’s sides, slipping under the hem of Harry’s jumper.

“Love these stupid jumpers of yours, have I told you that?” Louis mumbles, the shake of his voice contradicting his previous impression of control. “They’re absurd, these ridiculous patterns. Drive me mad. Always want to touch so badly—”

“ _Please_ ,” Harry groans, and Louis obliges by pulling Harry’s jumper over his head and throwing it carelessly to the floor before capturing his mouth once again. And now he’s touching Harry’s skin _everywhere_ , tracing random patterns like he’s exploring and can’t decide where to go next.

“God you’re fit,” Louis gasps, pressing closer to Harry and shifting so his thigh is rubbing against the front of Harry’s trousers. Harry, who feels like his cock has been half-hard since he first saw Louis outside the pub, lets out another one of those embarrassing moans, and grinds into him.

“Yeah,” Louis says stupidly, while Harry starts working on the buttons of his shirt. It’s slow going – difficult to have fine motor control when the most beautiful man you’ve ever met is snogging you like his life depends on it. _One strike against sultry unbuttoning,_ Harry thinks distantly, before he finally gets the shirt off, and then he stops being capable of much thinking at all.

Louis is just so _warm_ , is the thing – the golden tan of his skin, the slick heat of his mouth, the velvety intimacy of new tattoos revealed – and Harry’s body lights up wherever Louis touches him, a vicarious incandescence. Harry’s burning; he never wants it to stop.

“You’re so—” Louis starts, and cuts himself off with a groan. He’s got a hand on Harry’s arse, squeezing it through Harry’s trousers and brushing his fingers down the space between Harry’s pants and the sensitive skin of his lower back, and Harry can picture it so clearly: Louis reaching just a _bit_ lower, Louis fucking him, that addictive heat melting Harry from the inside-out. Harry whimpers and presses closer, rutting helplessly against Louis’ leg, fabric of their trousers making the slide too rough, but Harry can’t stop, needs Louis to be touching his cock more than he’s ever needed _anything_ , except maybe—

“C’n I blow you?” Harry pulls back far enough to mumble. Louis looks how Harry feels: flushed, wild-eyed, mouth kiss-bruised and panting. “Please, want my mouth on you, Lou. Need it.”

Harry should feel badly about how immediately he’s resorted to begging, but he can’t, not if it gets Louis to say ‘yes.’

“Fuck,” is what Louis _actually_ says, but Harry reckons that’s close enough. And indeed, Louis is slipping out of his own trousers and bouncing backward onto the bed, like if he moves too slowly, Harry’ll withdraw the offer.

Harry takes a moment to stare at Louis sprawled naked on his bed, all lean muscles and dazzling smile. There’s a drop of sweat sliding down the hollow of his throat, and Harry wants to trace it with his tongue. He has to remind himself he’s got other priorities: namely, Louis’ gorgeous cock, just as lean as the rest of him and flushed a dusky pink, just _begging_ to be tasted.

“God, how is everything about you so pretty?” Harry murmurs, settling onto the bed himself.

“Pot meet kettle, Gorgeous.”

Louis sighs out a noise of pure bliss when Harry takes him into his mouth, and his hand settles gently on the crown of Harry’s head, not exerting any pressure, just a soft reminder of the connection between them. Harry starts slowly, wanting to explore and taste – and _God_ , Louis tastes _amazing_ – curling his tongue around the head of Louis’ cock, feeling him out.

Eventually, Louis makes a slightly more urgent noise above him, and Harry allows himself to get sloppier, using his hand on the parts of Louis’ cock his mouth can’t reach alone. Having Louis inside him is exactly the feast of sensation Harry’d expected, sending each of his senses into overdrive: silk, and salt, and that familiar simmering heat all twining together into a heady combination. Harry finds himself sliding lower, deeper, trying to fit more of Louis into his mouth, always needing _more_.

He can sense Louis’ thighs tensing, his stomach quivering with the need to come, and Harry simultaneously wants desperately to be the one to do it, and also never wants this to end.

But in a moment, Harry may not have a choice. Louis groans out, “Haz, I’m—” and gives him a warning tug on one of his curls for good measure, and Harry pulls off but tightens his grip, sliding his hand up Louis’ full length and brushing the head with his thumb, and after only a few more strokes like that, Louis comes.

Harry watches his face avidly, watches the way his beautiful eyes scrunch closed, the way his mouth goes slack and he gasps almost like the sudden rush of pleasure has caught him by surprise.

It’s too much, and by the time Louis has given a great languid blink and focused back on the world around him, Harry’s got his own trousers and pants off and is fisting his own cock desperately.

“C’mere,” Louis mumbles, batting at Harry with one arm until Harry moves closer. He lays down on the bed so they’re nose to nose. Louis reaches over to clasp their hands and bring Harry off together, with Louis’ come to ease the way. Louis’ eyes might still be a bit hazy with the effects of his orgasm, but his gaze never falters, steady on Harry and very blue. Harry tries to keep his eyes open for as long as possible, but the knowledge that Louis is so intently watching him fall apart proves too much for him, and his own eyes slam shut as he comes.

Harry’s still recovering when he hears Louis say next to him: “Well, that settles it. It’s _definitely_ a pirate’s life for me.”

And Harry bursts into uncontrollable giggles.

“Sleep,” he mumbles, once he’s caught his breath. He reaches out to link their fingers together, and he’s asleep before he can even think to turn off the bedroom light.

***

The next morning, Harry wakes up first, and for a while he just stares at Louis sleeping next to him, admiring the curve of his eyelashes and the way the angles of his face get a little softer in repose. But soon enough, his bladder forces him out of bed, and once he’s up, he reckons he may as well start on breakfast.

He’s just poking his head into his refrigerator to see if he has any eggs when his phone rings. He pulls it out of his pyjama pocket and is surprised to see Elaine’s name appear on the screen.

“’Lo?” he says, very eloquently.

“You’re really hanging around with Louis Tomlinson now?” Elaine says without preamble, and Harry considers hanging up the phone right then and there. It’s only the memory of their last conversation, when she’d seemed so frightened of Arthur Addison, that keeps him on the line. She might be able to shed some light on their own mysterious break-in.

As it is, his tone is glacial when he says: “Not sure why that’s your business, Elaine.”

“I told you before that I’m your friend,” Elaine retorts sharply. “And if your other friends aren’t as worried about this as me, maybe they’re not really your friends.”

“What _exactly_ do you mean by ‘this?’”

“Christ, Hazza, _anything_ would be bad enough. You’ve a good heart and you think the best of people, but you don’t know what he’s like. He might think he likes you now, but he doesn’t understand you. He _can’t_. And once he’s learned whatever Manic Pixie Spiritualism Lesson he’s using you for, he’ll move on.”

“What the _hell_ , Elaine,” Harry chokes out. “You don’t even _know_ him.” Which isn’t even close to everything Harry wants to say, but his mind seems to be working oddly sluggishly now.

“Don’t I?” Elaine asks cryptically. “And don’t I know _you_? You’ve always wanted to believe in true love, but I’m telling you, _this isn’t it_. Not on his end, anyway. You need to stay away from him.”

“The only thing I _need_ to do,” Harry starts shakily, suddenly too angry to even _try_ to ask her about Addison, “is hang up. Goodbye, Elaine.”

Harry tries to force the conversation with Elaine from his mind. The only thing he needs to think about, he tells himself, are the eggs in his refrigerator and his plan for what he and Louis can get up to for the rest of the morning, with the help of an energizing breakfast, a comfortable bed, and nowhere else to be for hours.

***

Harry sees Louis again the very next evening. He appears in the Grimoire a few moments before closing, takeaway in hand. Some of Harry’s confusion must show on his face, because Louis smile goes uncertain and his first words upon entering the shop are: “Okay, so in retrospect I clearly should’ve called first.”

“No, it’s fine,” Harry rushes to reassure him. “It’s only that we just—” Harry struggles with a _non-embarrassing_ way to explain that spent the entire day thinking about texting Louis, but forcing himself to hold off for fear of looking too desperate, and that he certainly wasn’t expecting _Louis_ to seek him out again so soon. But Louis must misunderstand him, because his smile falls even further.

“No, you’re right, I clearly have _no chill_ , I’ll just—”

“Please stay,” Harry blurts out, and well, at least they can have no chill together. “What’d you bring me?” He gestures at the takeaway bag in Louis’ arms.

“Chinese, but I’ll warn you, I brought it as a bribe.”

“Oh yeah? And what exactly were you hoping to get in return, Tomlinson?” Harry gives Louis his best lascivious grin.

“Well, now that I know you can be bought,” Louis laughs. “But no, actually, I wanted…” His body language has gone strangely fragile again. “Would you give me a tour? Of the Grimoire?”

Harry stares at him for a beat, shocked that _this_ is what Louis thought Harry needed to be _bribed_ into, as if it wasn’t the _best news in the world_ that Louis was even _interested_ —

“Y’know, it’s fine, we can just do the Chinese,” Louis starts, any of the earlier openness in his face wiped away into a perfectly neutral expression.

“I’d _love to_ ,” Harry breathes, unable to contain how honest he’s being. “This is my favorite place.”

“I know,” Louis says simply. “That’s why I want to know it.” He looks up at Harry through his fringe, and it’s not like Harry doesn’t understand the odd intimacy of what Louis is asking. Seeing the Grimoire means seeing as much of Harry’s soul as is visible on the outside. Apparently, Louis understands that as well as Harry does.

Harry’s strangely not worried about that, even though he and Louis have only known each other _properly_ for a handful of days.

And somewhat to Harry’s surprise, he realizes it’s not even because he believes they’re destined for eternal love, although that’s still a lovely idea – a glowing, golden possibility that lingers on the edges of his awareness whenever he’s around Louis.

Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that Louis had asked, and recognized what the asking was worth. Maybe that’s reason enough to trust someone.

Maybe it’s the fact that the Chinese smells _really good_.

“We’ll do the tour first, then the Chinese,” Harry decides. “The shop’ll be closed by then, and we can eat in the loft.”

“You have a _loft_ in here?”

Harry takes Louis through each section row-by-row, pausing on some longer than others, but always with a story, or a favorite book, or an explanation of what it’s meant to him. Louis never seems to tire of hearing Harry’s narration, however rambling it becomes. He nods encouragingly whenever Harry starts to become self-conscious about talking for so long, and occasionally asks a question, or shares an observation or preference of his own, to let Harry know that he’s following along intently.

At last, they come to Harry’s novel section, and Louis smiles when he sees it.

“And I already know how you feel about these.”

“I thought about George Eliot, actually, the first time I saw you,” Harry says without thinking, too comfortable after the last hour of blurting out his every random thought. But Louis doesn’t look put off by this revelation, just warm and open and ready for Harry to explain.

“The moment when Will saw Dorothea in Rome, in _Middlemarch_ , dunno if you’ve read it, but…”

“I’ve read it,” Louis assures him. “And that’s…a very intense relationship to identify with.” But his tone is full of fondness rather than mockery.

“George Eliot always loved intensely. And it’s not like it ever really ended well, for her protagonists, but I couldn’t help feeling like they were lucky anyway. I’d been looking for that feeling for so long, and I’d started to think I wasn’t capable of it.”

Louis is quiet for a moment, clearly thinking it through, and then he nods, fingers resting lightly on the spines of the nearest books on the shelf.

“Like, the more you want to feel a certain way, the farther away it seems from you,” he finally says. “I know it’s different, but I remember being a teenager, the only gay kid I knew, and the life I wanted just seemed…galaxies away. Unreachable. So I made up a different life. Alfred Lord.”

“I don’t think it’s as different as you think,” Harry reflects. “I think being bi was part of what drew me to these books. A chance to make up a different life, like you said. I never knew if I wanted to _love like_ Dorothea or just love _her_ , but at least the novel never made me choose. The erotics of reading has created a lot of confusion in my life, though,” Harry finishes ruefully, and it shocks Louis into a laugh. The sound of it seems to break whatever odd, charged moment they’d been having, here amongst the books.

“C’mon Cinderella, I promised you Chinese,” Louis says.

“Nope, in this shop, I answer only to Belle,” Harry retorts primly. “When you see the loft, you’ll understand.”

“Y’know, behind that fair façade, I’m afraid you’re rather odd,” Louis teases back. “Also, I think our spring rolls might’ve gotten cold.”

Once they’ve eaten their – admittedly lukewarm – Chinese food, they’re both feeling so full and comfortable in the loft that neither of them want to leave. So instead, they end up cuddled on the chaise longue, pressed together so neither of them falls off, Harry folding himself up so that he can burrow more easily into Louis’ side. They each have a book, and Harry has been making a valiant effort to read, but he finds it’s much easier to drift on the waves that crest and subside with the slow rhythm of Louis running his hand through Harry’s hair.

“My family is coming to visit this weekend,” Louis murmurs, and it feels less like his voice is breaking a comfortable silence and more like he’s only adding a new texture to it.

“Mm,” Harry agrees sleepily, and rubs his face against Louis’ jumper, relishing the slight scratchiness of the fabric. It only adds to the symphony of sensation that feels like it’s being conducted especially for his benefit.

“Harry? You awake?” Louis asks. He pulls his hand out of Harry’s hair and taps him lightly on the nose instead. Harry frowns and tries to squint down at it, with limited success.

“No,” Harry grumbles, but that response only makes Louis laugh at him.

“Well, can your unconscious mind tackle the question of whether you’d like to come to lunch with a few of my sisters? Maybe the answer will come to you in a dream.”

Harry blinks and levers himself up off Louis, to look at him properly. There’s a fond quirk to Louis’ lips that Harry is starting to recognize as special to _him_ , and Harry takes a moment to let the pleasure of this moment wash through him before he grins cheekily back.

“Y’know, I just had the oddest dream. Some pretentious poet trapped me in my own bookshop and threatened me with _sisters_.”

Louis obliges with a gasp that conveys the deepest shock. “What could it mean? Should we consult Freud?”

Harry shakes his head solemnly. “M’afraid we might be on our own with interpreting this one.” He flops back down and puts his hands behind his head like a parody of an analyst’s couch. “Well go on, then.”

“Hmm,” Louis grins down at him, even as his hand goes back to the absent-minded stroking of Harry’s curls off his forehead. “In my expert opinion, the patient is suffering from infatuation with a staggeringly handsome, charismatic, brilliant man. Clearly your subconscious knows what a catch he is. The only cure is a meal, I’m afraid, with your _gorgeous_ poet’s very charming sisters. It’s really the only treatment with any hope of success. Medically speaking, of course.”

“Of course,” Harry laughs. He tugs at Louis’ shoulder, and Louis obliges him. With a smoothness that Harry both deeply appreciates and deeply envies (if Harry had tried a similar maneuver, one of them would certainly have ended up in hospital with a ruptured organ or a dislocated limb), Louis rolls them both so that Harry is lying back on the chaise longue and Louis is suddenly draped over them.

“On second thought,” Louis murmurs. He tilts his head forward until his fringe whispers against Harry’s face, and his lips are milimeters from Harry’s own. “Who needs a cure for this.”

“Cheesy,” Harry admonishes, but he smiles and lets himself be kissed anyway.

The next time Harry wakes up, the Grimoire is dark and quiet, except for the humming sound of rain and Louis’ quiet breaths puffing against the back of his neck. Most of their clothes have migrated to the floor, and Harry’s body feels heavy with the residual effects of his orgasm – Louis’ mouth teasing him slowly but inexorably, before bringing him crashing over the edge – and then the nap immediately after.

Harry has no sense of how long he’s been asleep. He tries to squirm his phone out of his trousers to check without disturbing Louis, but he’s barely moved his arm before Louis is waking with a disgruntled little snuffle. Harry takes a moment to appreciate the utter adorability of that noise.

“Harry?” Louis murmurs. “Y’wake?”

Harry turns best he can on the chaise longue so that he and Louis are nose-to-nose.

“Oh.” Louis’ smile unfurls, slowly and with residual sleepiness. “Hello.”

“Sounds like it’s raining again,” Harry says, smiling helplessly back. “Not sure how late it is; Niall’s probably gone home long ago.”

“Tragic,” Louis agrees, voice low. There’s no reason for them to be quiet, but they both do it instinctively, pressing their faces closer to muffle their words against cheeks and catch them on lips.

“Louis,” Harry sighs, with no idea what he intends to say in follow-up. Louis is also shirtless, and Harry enjoys the warm press of his body against Harry’s, the way Harry can feel hard planes of muscle shifting under deceptively soft skin, the flashes Harry gets of Louis’ tattoos, strong and dark like they’ve only just been inked.

“Can’t go out in the rain, can we? Too many of those Poetic Forces at work. Anything could happen,” Louis says, stretching languidly against Harry’s chest, a dizzyingly slow slide of skin.

“And here? What happens if we stay here?”

Louis’ smile transforms from fond to positively filthy.

“Ah, that’s a different kind of Poetic Force, love,” Louis says, and the laughter bursts out of Harry easily, as the heavy tension between them transforms into something lighter and tinged with humor.

Louis tilts his head to kiss Harry properly, a languid press of lips, as he skims a hand up Harry’s thigh.

“How’d you manage to keep your pants on through all that earlier?” Louis mumbles, as though the fact that Harry’s not fully naked right now is an unacceptable oversight.

“Pretty sure _you_ were responsible for that. I recall something about wanting my legs trapped so you could take as much _bloody_ time as you wanted.”

“That does sound like me,” Louis says, cheerfully unrepentant. “And yet, strangely, still wasn’t enough time.” He works a line of light kisses down Harry’s throat, making Harry’s breath catch, clearly intent on a new mission, and Harry is _very fine_ with learning what it is.

It’s at that _very inopportune_ moment that he’s startled by his phone, ringing from somewhere in the pile of clothing on the floor. He nearly falls off the chaise longue in surprise, and would have, if not for Louis’ laughing grip around his waist.

It’s Niall. And Harry is consumed by a sudden, horrible fear that Niall _has_ , in fact, been inside the shop this whole time.

“Haz? Just wanted to check on how things were looking when you left the Grimoire. It’s mad outside, and I’d hate to find anything destroyed tomorrow.”

“What?” The rush of relief Harry feels that Niall is _not_ downstairs calling to take the piss out of them both fades into pure confusion. He wonders if he’s been dreaming after all, and that’s why this conversation makes no sense.

“The flooding,” Niall explains impatiently.

“What’s flooding?” Harry asks stupidly, and there’s a long pause on the other end of the phone. Louis meanwhile is sitting up and watching Harry with bright, alert eyes. He runs an absent hand through his fringe which does absolutely nothing to mitigate the utter chaos his hair’s currently in.

“Alright?” he mouths, and Harry shakes his head.

“Harry…” Niall finally says. “Please tell me you’re not still in the Grimoire.”

“Yeah, we…erm…fell asleep.” Harry slants a look at Louis, glad that Niall can’t hear his blush through the phone. Louis raises his eyebrows, which, combined with the hair, makes him look like a very surprised hedgehog.

“And you didn’t see any of the weather warnings? There’s water everywhere, all through the streets. And it still hasn’t stopped raining. They’re saying it’s dangerous to be outside.”

“Niall says the streets are flooding,” Harry repeats for Louis’ benefit. Louis lets out a stream of curses that would make Shakespeare blush, and immediately starts fishing around the loft floor for their clothes.

“Call me when you and Lou get home,” Niall is saying over the phone. “Be safe, yeah?”

“Yeah, ‘course,” Harry replies absently, more worried about the books downstairs than himself. Oxford floods constantly; Harry is confident in his and Louis’ ability to navigate a few inches of water on the pavement, but a few inches is still enough to do serious damage to a bookshop, especially when its owners are less than diligent about getting books up off the ground.

Harry throws his own clothes on and practically falls down the spiral staircase to the ground floor. He breathes a sigh of relief when everything still seems as dry as when he’d left it. Louis makes his way down the staircase more slowly, eyes on his phone.

“This actually looks pretty bad,” he mumbles, turning his phone to show Harry a video from his Twitter feed. At first Harry doesn’t recognize the gray, waterlogged scene, before he suddenly places the street only a few blocks away.

“D’you think we should stay here?” Harry asks anxiously, still thinking primarily of the potential fate of the books.

“Dunno.” Louis squints out the shop windows. “Seems alright here; we’re farther from the river. But we should probably leave soon, if we’re going to.”

Harry carefully opens the front door to the Grimoire, but he needn’t have worried. The water licks at his feet but doesn’t spill into the shop at all.

“Your flat’s closer,” Louis notes, scrunching up his face as he considers the rain-soaked street. Even amidst the worry and the imminent drenching, Harry feels a lick of warm pleasure curl through his chest at Louis’ easy comfort with suggesting Harry’s flat. He can’t help the grin he directs at Louis, then, even though he’s sure it makes him look a bit mad: standing in the pouring rain and smiling at nothing. Louis smiles uncertainly back, before stepping out into the rain himself.

They wade through the streets toward Harry’s flat, becoming wetter than Harry ever imagined a human could become. Louis’ hair is plastered to his head, raindrops streaming down his fringe into his eyes no matter how many times he tries to brush it back. His dark blue jumper clings to his chest and arms, slipping down to reveal hints of his tattoos and a collarbone flushed red with cold. He looks so utterly, effortlessly gorgeous that Harry briefly entertains a fantasy of pressing him up against a brick storefront to taste the rainwater on Louis’ skin. Louis’ body is always rather furnace-like, and Harry imagines that if he slides his hands under Louis’ layers and up against the skin of his lower back, Harry might finally be warm again himself.

If not for the wet-cat glare that Louis is directing at anything that has the misfortune to fall into his immediate path, Harry might’ve done it. But as it is, he just sighs and catches at one of Louis’ hands with his own. That’ll have to be enough for now. Louis glances down at their suddenly clasped hands, surprised, and his scowl does lighten by about thirty percent. Harry smiles, small and entirely for himself.

He’s so caught up in it all – the romance of the rain, the feeling of Louis’ hand in his – that it takes him longer than it should to notice that the water has been steadily rising up his feet for the last few blocks. But then they turn a corner, and both stop, dismayed. This road has always been a bit crooked, with odd dips in the pavement that speaks to its general age and decrepitude. But to pass down this street now, they realize they’ll have to wade through water almost as high as their hips, with no sign of when it will recede again.

“Is there another way through?” Louis asks quietly, staring at the swirling water in front of them. Harry considers it.

“Nothing that’ll be better,” he finally decides. Nothing for it. He takes a breath, squares his shoulders, and starts walking.

“Harry, wait—” Louis rushes out, but he’s still holding on to Harry’s hand, and so he ends up getting dragged along before he can finish whatever protest he’d been intending to make.

The water is more powerful than it had seemed when Harry was standing on the edge of the road. The surface of it had been rough with rain, certainly, but now, Harry can also feel the strong currents that buffet against his legs under the surface.

“Harry, seriously!” Louis shouts, but Harry knows that if he tries to stop or turn back – if he does anything but hold tightly to Louis and keep moving – there’s a good chance one of them will fall.

Rain lashes against his face, making it hard to see, so that objects loom suddenly out of the gray haze that surrounds them. Familiar, everyday things seem contorted into alien shapes by the neverending rain: lampposts and postboxes, and a wrought-iron fence that Harry nearly trips over before he manages to swerve them both around it. Louis is shouting something else behind him, but Harry can’t even hear him anymore over the pounding of the rain.

Soon they’re in the center of the road, where the water is deepest. Harry registers a sharp shout right before something smashes into his side, wrenching Louis’ hand out of his and sending Harry tumbling headfirst into the worst of the flood. He opens his mouth, in some vague impulse to call out for Louis, only for water to pour into it immediately. He can’t get his feet under him. He’s no longer sure which way is up. Panic fills him as he kicks out, desperate for air. His lungs burn and his head spins with lack of oxygen and terror, and for one, suspended moment, Harry is completely convinced he’s about to die.

And then he’s being wrenched upright by his jumper. Harry bursts to the surface, coughing and teary, to find a wide-eyed Louis gripping the material of his shirt. Even after Harry’s standing upright again, Louis seems reluctant to let it go.

“Alright?” Louis gasps, like he’d been the one who couldn’t breathe.

“Yeah,” Harry manages to croak, before he pulls Louis closer, burying his face in Louis’ neck and letting the solidity of his body ease the shudders out of Harry’s own. Louis waits patiently, arms steady around Harry’s back, as Harry wheezes gratefully into his skin. When Harry finally lifts his head to look Louis in the face, he catches a glimpse of some of Louis’ own residual panic before it’s hastily papered over with a smile.

“C’mon, love, we’re almost there,” Louis reassures him. “And look—” he directs Harry’s attention to the object that must’ve knocked him down, a thick wooden pallet that’s sitting a few feet away, having gotten tangled up in the same fence that had nearly tripped Harry a few moments before. “You can have a rest on that, and I’ll get us home, yeah?”

At any other moment, Harry might have said something: objected to being given the repreive of the pallet, possibly, or commented on the way Louis had called Harry’s flat “home,” but now he’s too exhausted and rain-soaked to do anything but allow Louis to practically carry him over to the pallet and settle him atop it. It floats fine even with Harry’s extra weight, and Louis steers them easily down the street. He’s moving slowly but cautiously, and Harry lets himself drift a bit, confident that he’s safe as long as Louis’ hands stay securely on his shoulders.

“Poetic Forces, huh?” Harry mumbles after some indeterminate time has passed. He glances around and sees to his vague surprise that they’re on his street now, only a few feet from his door. The water’s much shallower here, although Louis hasn’t seemed inclined to force Harry to walk again.

“Hmm?” Louis quirks a smile down at Harry. “I was actually thinking: this is all a bit “never let me go, Jack,” innit? Reckon the Poetic Forces go in for the romantic films as well, or are they strictly a revenge-based operation?”

“What?” Harry gasps. He still must be in some form of shock, because the realization of what Louis’ just said – how right he might inadvertently be – sweeps over him bit-by-bit, slow waves of cold horror lapping at the edges of his understanding. “What did you just say?”

“You know, _Titanic_?” Louis cocks his head. “Hasn’t it felt a bit like we’re in the plot of _Titanic_? Without the actual drowning, of course.” He attempts a smile, but it flickers out before it can properly form. “Let’s get you inside, you look done in,” is what he says instead.

Harry allows himself to be led up to his flat, even as his mind is working furiously. He’s remembering, with a sensation that feels strikingly similar to nausea, all the other off-hand jokes he and Louis have been making lately: the rom-com note, the _You’ve Got Mail_ date, even Liam’s runaway dog. Harry remembers running back into that pub, soaked with rain, to kiss Louis like Emma Stone had kissed Ryan Gosling in _Crazy, Stupid, Love._

Harry thinks about what he’d told Louis – _God,_ only yesterday – that he loved novels and rom-coms and stories about love because he _believed_ in them. Just like Spiritualists have to believe in the spells they cast. Just like what Harry had believed, when he’d crafted his own Finding Spell to guide him to Louis, the one that had seemed to flow out from his pen like watercolors from a brush.

Niall and Remy had cautioned Harry against completing the spell. They’d warned him of the unforeseen consequences of casting something so tied up with Harry’s strongest emotions, especially before he’d even been able to define those emotions to himself, let alone account for them in his spellwriting.

They had been right. What Harry’d intended as a simple Finding Spell may in fact have created something else. Something horrible.


	3. Chapter 3

_The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves,_  
_And flamed upon the brazen greaves  
_ _Of bold Sir Lancelot._

_She left the web, she left the loom,_  
_She made three paces thro’ the room,_  
_She saw the water-lily bloom,_  
_She saw the helmet and the plume,_  
_She look’d down to Camelot._  
_Out flew the web and floated wide;_  
_The mirror crack’d from side to side;_  
_“The curse is come upon me,” cried  
_ _The Lady of Shalott._

 

“Niall,” Harry gasps into his phone. He’s hiding in the toilet of his own flat, pretending to take a shower while Louis makes tea. “I don’t know what to do. The Finding Spell that we all thought didn’t work? I think it _did_ work.”

“Haz, what are you talking about? Did you and Louis get home alright? They’re saying on the news it’s one of the worst floods Oxford’s had in years.”

“We’re fine,” Harry says, impatient that Niall hasn’t yet grasped the importance of what he’s trying to explain. “Niall, listen, I think the spell I cast has been manipulating Louis. Instead of _finding_ him, it’s been setting up these romantic scripts, and then forcing him to play them out. I think maybe the spell has been controlling him, this whole time.”

A sudden memory of Elaine’s recent warning floats through Harry’s mind: _This isn’t true love. Not on his end_.

Had Elaine been right? Had Harry’s friends been too close – too willing to see the best in Harry – to properly judge his relationship with Louis?

“What?” Niall is laughing on the other end of the phone. “Harry, did you get struck by lightning or something on your way home? You know the Fundamental Laws of Magic as well as I do, and what you’re talking about would violate several. Louis wasn’t even there when you cast the Finding Spell, and magic _definitely_ can’t manipulate anyone in the way you’re suggesting.”

“No, listen,” Harry urges, before trying to summarize the connections he’d made earlier: how their first kiss in the pub was straight out of _Crazy, Stupid, Love_ , right down to the rain; how Liam’s dog had run straight to him, like in _You’ve Got Mail_ ; how Louis had just rescued Harry like Jack saved Rose in _Titanic_.

“…and don’t you think it’s weird that we never seem to _plan_ to see each other, we just run into each other by accident? It’s all these little things – little romantic tropes – that never seemed strange to me, because it validated everything I wanted to believe about romance. Because it was _me_ who made it all happen,” Harry finally concludes, through the guilt-stricken tears that are threatening to clog his throat.

There’s a long silence on the other end of the phone, and Harry waits miserably for his best friend to denounce him the way he deserves.

Without any sound on the phone to distract him, and despite the noise of the shower that Harry still has running, he can hear a soft rustling on the other side of the loo door. Louis, he concludes, must be hovering somewhere nearby. Harry’s desperately grateful that Louis hasn’t suggested joining him in the shower, and the knowledge that even a few hours ago, Harry would have been thrilled to have Louis naked in a warm shower, causes a wave of nausea to rush over him.

_God_ , the things they’ve already _done_ –

And all this time, a spell that Harry had foolishly, unthinkingly cast might’ve had its hold on Louis. _Brought them together,_ in more than just a physical sense. Who knows how much of what had happened between them had been real? Since they met, they’d been endlessly rehearsing scenes from Harry’s favorite novels and romantic movies. It had been _Harry himself_ who’d said that meeting Louis had been like a scene in a novel come to life. _His books guiding him_. He remembers thinking that. But of course, that had never been true. It had been Harry all along: his stupid hopes, his romantic illusions, formed from a lifetime of reading happily ever afters.

He should have seen it sooner. He should have known. He should never have cast that spell.

“Harry, just so I understand,” Niall finally says, what seems like several hours later. “You’re suggesting that _you_ created a massive, city-wide flood, just to indulge a rescue fantasy that Louis was magically compelled to participate in. With the power of love.”

“Yes,” Harry blurts out, relieved that Niall seems to get it.

“And you _do_ remember that Oxford floods constantly. Was it also magic in 2014, then?”

“I’m serious! But maybe I didn’t cause the flood itself. Maybe the magic just…saw an opportunity and took it.”

“An opportunity to dunk you into what amounted to a large puddle,” Niall clarifies evenly. “For love.”

“Will you _stop_ with the ‘power of love’ thing?” Harry hisses, mindful that Louis is still in his flat. “I’m trying to tell you I’ve been _mind-controlling_ Louis—”

“And you know perfectly well that it’s impossible! We didn’t even think that Finding Spell _worked_. It felt like _nothing_ had happened, let alone something that violated all known laws of magic! This whole scenario you’ve constructed just…isn’t a thing. So what’s this really about? Are you panicking that things are starting to get serious between you and Louis? Because I’ll tell you, Haz, it kind of sounds like you’re panicking—”

“I’m not panicking!” Harry shouts into the phone. There is a pointed silence on the other end of the line. And, after a few seconds, a light knock on the door.

“Harry, are you OK?” Louis calls.

“Fine!” Harry calls back. “Just updating Niall. In…the shower? Multitasking? Niall was really worried.”

“O-kay? Well, I have tea for you when you’re done, and I hope you don’t mind, but I sort of raided your kitchen cupboards while I was on a domestic roll, so there’s also snacks.”

“Thanks!” And then, hissed into the phone: “If I’m panicking, it’s only because I might’ve _magically roofied Louis_ , which, actually, seems like a _great reason_ to panic!”

“Except that that’s _literally impossible_ , as I’ve now reminded you _several times_.” Niall repeats patiently. “Listen, nothing you’ve told me amounts to much besides coincidence. It’s a pattern _you_ see, because you’re so familiar with these tropes, but _even if_ – and it’s a big if! – the Finding Spell had worked on you, and made you more likely to run into Louis around town, that’s still a far cry from mind control! Harry, I’ve _met_ Louis. I’ve _talked_ to him. He’s not under any sort of magical compulsion. If you can’t trust yourself on this, at least trust _me_.”

But all Harry can hear is Elaine’s voice, echoing through his mind over and over.

_It’s not true love. You need to stay away from him_.

“I need to stay away from him,” Harry gasps out loud. “But everything’s still flooded. _God_.”

“You don’t _need_ to stay away from him,” Niall says, sounding like he’s coming to the end of his patience with this. “You _want_ to, for some reason—”

“Why would I want to?” Harry blurts out, swiftly nearing the limits of his own patience as well. “I _hate_ walking away from Louis, even my body hates it, it’s like I go into fight-or-flight. Even the first night I met him properly, before I even _liked_ him, I stood outside the pub for twenty minutes like an _idiot_ , because I felt so jumpy—”

“You felt _what_?” Niall interrupts sharply, and Harry’s glad that Niall _finally_ seems to be taking this seriously, although naturally he’s managed to fixate on entirely the wrong details. But Harry gamely tries to explain the strange feeling of claustrophobia he’d experienced when he’d tried to leave Louis behind in the pub, and how, instead of leaving, he’d run back in to kiss him.

“Just like—”

“— _Crazy Stupid Love_. Yeah Harry, I heard you before,” Niall mumbles. His voice has gone a little faded, like he’s no longer paying as much attention to where his phone is, and he’s let it slip away from his mouth. “ _Shit._ ”

“You believe me,” Harry says, no longer a question.

“No. I—I don’t know. I need to check some things…” Harry’s not sure Niall even remembers he’s on the phone at this point, too consumed with thoughts of this new puzzle. And then his voice comes into sharp focus again: “But Harry, listen to me. If _any_ of what you’re saying is true, it means it’s unprecedented. We can’t be sure of what’s happening with you and Louis; we can’t be sure of _anything_ except that magic has done something it shouldn’t be able to do. I know you’re afraid for Louis, and that’s _fair_ , but I don’t think you should tell anyone about this. Including him. Just…let me try to learn more about it first, okay?”

“How is any of this okay?” Harry starts to say, but Niall has hung up on him before he’s halfway through the words. “ _Fuck._ ”

And of course Harry trusts Niall in general, but Harry doesn’t think Niall quite grasped the seriousness of the situation, or else he wouldn’t be advising Harry to continue associating with Louis under false, magical pretenses.

_It’s not real. You need to stay away from him._

But, on the other hand, Harry realizes, he might not have a choice. Like he’d said before, everything is still flooded. At the very least, Louis will need to stay with Harry tonight.

_I can handle this_ , Harry thinks to himself, taking a deep breath and staring at the dark screen of the phone he’s still clutching in one hand. _Just go out, tell Louis I’m knackered, go to sleep. We’ll barely even talk to each other, let alone do anything else._

At that thought – at the idea of kissing Louis, or _worse_ , only to pull back to see a glaze of magic in his eyes – Harry’s former nausea comes rushing back, and he’s barely pulled the toilet seat up before he’s vomiting up his earlier dinner.

“Harry?” Louis’ voice has returned. “Seriously, I’m getting worried, can I come in?”

Harry takes a deep breath, blinks back a few tears, swishes a bit of mouthwash, and finally opens the door. Louis is hovering immediately behind it, one hand raised, either to knock again or try the door himself, Harry’s not sure. He clearly searched through Harry’s bedroom for dry clothes, because he’s wearing one of Harry’s t-shirts and a pair of flannel pyjama bottoms that are long enough to drag on the floor. He looks comfortable – adorably rumpled – and also highly concerned. His eyes track quickly over Harry’s face and down his body, as though searching for any visible injuries, before he holds out an armful of soft-looking clothing.

Harry realizes he hasn’t actually changed out of his wet clothes from earlier. He’d barely gotten the bathroom door closed before he was dialling Niall’s number, his phone miraculously working even after its plunge into the floodwaters. Harry sees Louis register this fact, but he only presses Harry’s pyjamas into his hands and says gently: “Why don’t you get into bed. There’s tea for you on your night table. And I’ll just turn this off, yeah?” He moves toward the shower, and Harry is grateful for the opportunity to skitter away. He’s changed and in bed by the time Louis reappears in his bedroom doorway.

“Alright if I stay in here tonight?” Louis asks, and Harry should say no – he _knows_ he should – but instead he finds himself nodding. Louis visibly brightens, and Harry _hates_ that it still makes his heart leap to see it.

Louis slides into bed next to him, but doesn’t try to push any closer. Harry can just sense him, a dark shape at the edges of his awareness. And maybe that should be enough for Harry, to know that Louis is safe and nearby ( _but if he’s nearby, he’s not safe_ ), but he’s consumed instead by a desperate need to be sure, to _feel_ him, to wrap their bodies around each other the way they’d been in the Grimoire only a few hours before.

What would it really hurt, if Harry allows himself the heavy, solid weight of Louis’ arm circling him, the steady thump of his heartbeat, the faint spicy scent of his skin, just one more time? Harry thinks that he can bear all the rest – he knows that when the time comes to get up tomorrow and leave Louis behind, Harry will be strong enough to do it – if only he’s allowed this one last night.

_Please_ , Harry begs. To himself, to the forces of magic, to whatever might be listening. _Please, let me have this._

With a muffled little sob, Harry rolls over and presses his face into Louis’ ribs. Louis goes still with surprise, and then immediately relaxes, wrapping an arm around Harry the way Harry had known he would, angled to caress the fuzzy little curls at the nape of his neck.

“It’s okay to still be scared,” Louis murmurs into the darkness. “It’s okay to not know what you need right now. We can just…stay here, like this, until you’re ready to leave the bed.”

_I never will,_ Harry thinks miserably. There are tears pooling in his eyes and starting to dampen Louis’ shirt where his face is scrunched into it. He only hopes that Louis attributes them to an extended adrenaline crash from his near-drowning. _I’d happily stay here forever, if I could_.

Harry doesn’t expect he’ll fall asleep – some part of him doesn’t even _want_ to, would rather spend the night cataloguing everything he can about how it feels to have Louis sleeping next to him – but of course he drifts off almost immediately, exhausted by the sequence of shocks he’s had tonight, and lulled by Louis’ warm presence.

The next morning, Harry does what he’d promised he would do, and begins the process of detaching himself permanently from Louis’ life.

***

“I told you to be _careful_ with Louis, but I definitely didn’t tell you to stop talking to him entirely,” Niall admonishes a few days later, glancing over his shoulder as he shelves a stack of new books, to the corner of the Grimoire where Harry is currently sulking. “In fact, judging by the text I just got, it’s hurting him more that you’re shutting him out.”

Harry straightens up immediately. “He texted you? You have his number? What did he say?” he blurts out, and Niall gives him another knowing look before turning around to slip a book neaty into place.

“He thinks you’re still spooked by the flood, and that’s why you’ve been all—” Niall makes a sweeping gesture that encompasses Harry’s general air of depression and misery. “—Quiet. He’s really worried, Haz. He knows you’ve been ducking his texts and calls, because he’s not an idiot. But he’s also not going to push it, because he’s a _good person_ and he thinks you’re, like, going through a trauma. Except he keeps suggesting ways I can look after you, like _I’m_ really going to offer you a soothing massage or something. It’s killing him that he can’t do any of that stuff himself, and it might just kill _me_ if I have to listen to any more of it.”

Harry shakes his head stubbornly. “If he knew the truth, he’d know it was better this way.”

“ _You_ don’t even know the truth. None of us do. I’m telling you, though, it may not be what you think.”

“Explain it to me then,” Harry challenges, and waits, hands pointedly on his hips, while Niall presses his lips together and shakes his head.

“I don’t know all the details. There’s a lot that still doesn’t make sense. No matter what, Magical Laws have been broken that nobody should be able to break,” Niall finally mumbles, once it’s clear he’s lost this little contest of wills.

“Well, until you can tell me otherwise, this is how it has to stay.”

Niall looks briefly like he’s about to argue the point further, but finally capitulates with a sigh. “Maybe you’re right. We know so little about what’s going on, and if you _really_ think Louis’ free will has be affected, I can see why you’re erring on the side of caution. I guess all I’m trying to say is, don’t _blame_ yourself for something we don’t even know happened.”

Harry appreciates Niall trying to make him feel better, but there’s no point. No matter what Niall may say about withholding judgment, Harry’s convinced he knows _exactly_ what happened.

***

Harry feels the itching between his shoulder blades seconds before he actually hears Louis calling out his name. Harry curses the instinct that had driven him to once again take the river path home this afternoon. He should have been more vigilant about his own impulses, now that he knows about the landmines that lurk in his own subconscious.

With a sensation of dread, Harry turns slowly to face Louis. He’s got Legolas with him again, and he’s wearing a navy blazer, a bit more formal than he usually goes for. Harry wonders if he’d been lecturing today. He somehow looks smaller than usual – tired and a bit faded around his edges – but the corners of his eyes are crinkling with pleasure at seeing Harry. His posture straightens out almost imperceptibly, so that between one blink and the next, he’s once again brimming with vivacity, that indefinable quality that makes him appear to occupy more space than he does.

“Alright?” Louis asks, giving Harry a searching look, and Harry offers a wan smile in return.

“Yeah, sorry I’ve been so…busy lately. How’re you?”

Harry finds he really means it. He gets the impression, from that brief glimpse before Louis had finished reconstructing his armor, that something is weighing on him. Harry hopes it doesn’t have to do with him; maybe it’s arrogant to assume it does.

Louis gives him a quick smile and answers breezily: “Good as ever. Hey, I actually just met with Margaret about her poetry portfolio, did she already tell you?”

“No,” Harry’s forced to confess. “I haven’t seen her lately either,” and Louis looks, if possible, even more worried than before.

“Well, she’s fuckin’ talented, as you probably know. Has a great ear. ‘M starting to think we’ve been going about poetry education all wrong, if Margaret’s an example of what some Spiritualist pedagogy can do...” Louis smiles, encouraging Harry to tease him for such a radical admission, but Harry is barely paying attention to the conversation anymore, because next to their path, the nearby river has suddenly become _filled_ with swans. They haven’t caught on to Harry and Louis’ presence nearby, but there’s an unsettling swarming quality to the patterns of their floating. Legolas has noticed them too: he whines and strains at his lead. Louis turns around, and his jaw drops.

Harry recognizes the scene instantly. He and Louis may not be rowing a boat through the middle of them, but he’s seen _The Notebook_ several dozen times. Enough to recognize the details from the scene on the lake, before Noah and Allie kiss in the rain.

Harry turns back to Louis, heart pounding. Louis raises his eyebrows in a silent question. Louis doesn’t _look_ like someone under magical control, is the thing. But how else could he have arrived here, now, just when Harry had, in time to witness the swan tableau that Harry’s sick brain had staged for them?

_Oh God_ , he needs to get away from Louis _right now_ , before he manages to make anything worse.

“Sorry, I— sorry,” Harry stutters, backing down the path. “I can’t—”

Louis’ slightly curious smile transforms instantly into a frown.

“Harry, seriously, is everything alright?” He takes a few steps toward Harry, concerned, but Harry can’t unsee how constructed it all is: the swans, the meeting, everything down to the microexpressions of affection on Louis’ face. They’re only there because deep down, it’s what Harry wants to see.

“I have to go,” he gasps, turns around, and runs.

He makes for the Grimoire, instinctively seeking out a place he associates with safety and refuge. Remy and Niall are both there when Harry bursts in, bent over an ancient, dilapidated-looking book. They seem so comfortable in each other’s space, speaking together in low mumurs. As Harry watches, Niall reaches across Remy to point at something on the page, and lets his hand linger against the skin on their wrist before retreating back to his own side. Remy had been staring intently at the book between them, a tiny wrinkle between their eyebrows, but at the feel of Niall’s touch, their expression smooths out and they tilt their head to give him a soft smile.

The intimacy of this small moment, witnessed without their knowledge, sends a painful spike of longing through the pit of Harry’s stomach. Both Remy and Niall glance up at the sound of the door closing, and Harry tries to muster up a smile for them in spite of his own jealousy.

Harry makes his way over to them, recognizing the piles of open books they’ve got spread out across the Grimoire’s front desk.

“You’re working on Addison’s number code again?” Harry asks, gesturing at the handwritten notes he can see, peeking out from under a volume written in what looks like French. “Thought you refused to have anything to do with it?” he continues with a glance at Remy.

“He’s very persuasive,” Remy shrugs. Niall coughs and goes bright red, and Remy elbows him in the side with a huff. “I meant your _argument_ ,” Remy clarifies, rolling their eyes.

“You okay, Harry?” Niall asks abruptly, seeming to focus on Harry properly for the first time since he’s entered the Grimoire. And Harry _really_ wishes that people would stop _asking_ him that.

“I’m _fine_ ,” he insists. “I practically ran here from Magdalen Bridge.” He’s still panting a bit from the effort, limbs still a bit rubbery, but it’s not like he’s been in great shape lately. There’s certainly no reason for Niall – and Remy now, too – to be looking at him with such unease.

“I didn’t know you were still interested in the Addison code,” Harry says to Niall, instead of any of the rest of what he’s thinking.

“Have a hunch it’s important,” Niall answers, but he already sounds more distant, like he’s retreating back into his own head even as they speak. “But Rem, shouldn’t your Protection Spell have countered any other magic?” he changes topics abruptly, gesturing to some notes written in his own indecipherable scrawl.

“That’s what I’m saying, none of this makes sense—” Remy says, and whatever they’re talking about sounds important, but Harry finds himself unable to focus properly on their words, the details of the conversation already slipping away. He’s just so tired…

He should probably join a gym, Harry thinks ruefully, if jogging a few blocks has become this difficult. But right now, all he can think about is climbing the ladder to the loft, curling up on the chaise longue that he and Louis had so recently shared, and taking a quick nap.

***

Harry has to drag himself out of bed the next morning for his usual shift at the bookstore. He makes tea and breakfast in a fog, feeling the same kind of slight headache that he sometimes gets to mark a change in the weather. And indeed, he’s halfway to the Grimoire when it starts raining, an unrelenting drizzle that mists up the road ahead of him. Harry’d been distracted enough upon leaving his flat that he’d forgotten his umbrella, and as his phone informs him that the rain is meant to stop again within the next fifteen minutes, he ducks into Rivendell in the hopes that Liam will fancy a chat.

He regrets this impulse almost instantly when the first thing Liam says when he sees him is: “What’s going on with you and Lou?”

Harry’s fingers falter on the spines of the books he’s pretending to browse.

“Nothing,” he says, too quickly. Liam frowns.

“I know you’ve been avoiding him. Did something happen?”

Harry can hear the worry in Liam’s voice.

“He can be a little intense, when he likes someone…” Liam offers, and Harry can’t bear the thought that Liam might blame Louis, on top of everything else. He finds himself blurting out the truth instead.

“It’s because I compelled him to like me, with magic. It was an accident, Liam, I _swear_ – but I can’t…I can’t be around him.”

There’s a prolonged silence from Liam beside him, and Harry can’t bear to look up to see his expression. He studies the shelf of vampire novels in front of him, and tries to stop his mouth from wobbling. Liam might hate him, but – he reminds himself sternly – that’s better than letting him believe Louis had been the one to do _anything_ wrong.

“I…don’t think that can be right,” Liam finally says slowly.

“What?” Perhaps Liam hadn’t understood what Harry’d said.

“Harry.” Liam touches his shoulder gently, encouraging Harry to turn and face him. “I’ve known Louis a long time. If he was…enchanted, or whatever you think happened, I’d know.” Liam sounds so certain, nodding as though the matter has been definitively settled, that Harry hates to disillusion him.

“Look, maybe it’s subtle? Or, like, the spell’s weaker when he’s away from me? But there _is_ a spell. I’m sorry.”

“But I thought you said, that thing about the Magical Laws…” Liam trails off, confused. “I don’t think you and Louis getting along so well is magic, Harry. I think it just means you’re a good match.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry repeats, squeezing his eyes shut and choking on the words.

The bell over the door dings, and the sound causes Harry’s eyes to fly open again. Just in time to see Louis duck into the bookstore, shaking rainwater out of his damp fringe, mind clearly elsewhere.

Harry freezes.

There’s nowhere for him to hide; the Doctor Who display offers no better cover than it had last time.

Louis looks up.

“Harry?” The smile he directs at Harry is uncertain, but he gamely makes his way forward. “You don’t have an umbella?” He holds up his own dripping umbrella, a shy offering. “For once, I’m armed for the Oxford weather. But if you’d like to take it?”

Umbrellas. _Persuasion. Fuck_.

“The Austen novel?” Louis asks, screwing up his face in confusion, and Harry realizes he must’ve said it out loud.

“Sorry, I have to—” Harry stutters before pushing his way past Louis toward the exit.

“Harry, wait!” Liam calls sharply, but Harry shakes his head as he shoves through the door.

He can’t help a glance back at Louis through Rivendell’s windowfront. He’s standing exactly where Harry left him, umbrella still half-lifted and mouth open in something that might be a plea.

Harry’s reminded suddenly of Austen’s words from that very same scene in _Persuasion_ , when Anne has run unexpectedly into the man she’d been forced to reject, and he’d offered her his own umbrella: _the overpowering, blinding, bewildering, first effects of a strong surprise. A something between delight and misery_.

As usual, Jane Austen had nailed it.

Harry squeezes his eyes shut and turns away from the sight of Louis, toward the rain-soaked pavement.

***

It’s a sudden noise that alerts Harry the next time, a sharp _crack_ that echoes throughout the street and causes Harry to snap his head up instinctively. The first thing he sees is Louis crossing the road, and _there—_ the source of the noise. A dumpster is rattling down a cobbled alley directly toward Louis. Nobody else seems to see or hear it. Nobody is alerting Louis to the danger he’s in.

Harry takes off running. He shouts a warning and Louis looks up, face creasing instinctively into a bright smile at the sight of him.

Harry reaches Louis a split-second before the dumpster does, his momentum tumbling them both to the ground just in time for the rubbish bin to hurtle harmlessly past them.

And now that the danger is past, Harry can process the fact that he’d landed on the pavement directly on top of Louis. Harry can feel Louis’ heart pounding against his own chest, and when Harry lifts his head, it’s to the sight of Louis’ wide, shocked eyes.

“Another rescue from certain death,” Louis says, wry but just a little breathless. “Are you actually a superhero? Be honest. D’you have a costume shoved in a police box somewhere?”

“I think you’re mixing up your genres. Liam would be horrified.” Harry smiles down at Louis, their faces still pressed close enough their noses are almost touching, close enough for Harry to see the light freckles on Louis cheek, the bronze highlights in the scruff along his jawline, the pink dip of his lips that Harry had once spent a whole afternoon tasting.

“Why d’you think I do it?” Louis says. His body is warm all down Harry’s own; his legs tangle easily in Harry’s and he’s made no motion to push him off.

Harry’s forgets what they’d been talking about.

“I, um—” Harry says. Louis easy smile changes, a shadow passing over his face, and he reaches up a hand to cup the back of Harry’s neck.

“Tell me what’s going on with you. Please.”

“It’s dangerous—” Harry practically slurs, touch-drunk and thoughtless.

“ _Dangerous_?” Louis pushes him away, just enough to see him properly, but that light shove is enough to recall Harry to his senses.

_Dangerous_. If there’s anything this last encounter between them has proven, it’s that this spell is willing to sacrifice not just Louis’ free will, but his physical safety to fulfill its terms. Every time Harry and Louis meet, the danger to Louis only grows.

“I can’t be around you,” Harry gasps. He gathers his tattered self-control back into himself and gets halfway down the road before Louis has even struggled back to his feet.

***

“A _dumpster_? Like in _The Wedding Planner_?” Niall echoes incredulously twenty minutes later. “Did Louis get his shoe stuck in a grate as well?”

“It’s not funny! He could have _died_. I can’t do this anymore, I need to…leave Oxford, or something, before this can get any worse.”

Niall, to his credit, sobers immediately. “You’re right.”

“ _I am_?”

“Not about the skipping town thing, that’s a stupid idea, but you’re right that this has all gone on long enough,” Niall frowns. “I’ve been meaning to go to London to see Paul Ramsay’s daughter, but she’s been _remarkably_ unwilling to settle on a time. But I think I’m going to insist.”

“Ramsay? Arthur Addison’s dead 1950s poet? What does his daughter have to do with anything happening between me and Louis?” Harry asks.

“That, my dear Harold, is what we need to go to London to figure out.”

***

“Did we really have to leave this early?” Harry complains, curling up in his train seat and glaring blearily at the world. Niall waves a travel cup of coffee under his nose, which Harry accepts, somewhat resentfully.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been the one who’s _more_ awake in the morning. It’s a lot of pressure,” Niall notes, sipping his own coffee. “If you’re depending on _me_ to navigate us safely through London, we might very well end up in Inverness instead.”

Harry mumbles into his cup.

“Hmm?”

“Think I might try to nap, actually.”

“Alright,” Niall says. He eyes Harry with a funny look, but doesn’t say anything else, just hums slightly at his coffee and fiddles with his phone. Confident that Niall will wake him up before they reach Marylebone Station – and _probably_ won’t abandon him on the train – Harry allows his eyes to slip closed. Lulled by the motion of the train on the tracks, it only takes a few moments for Harry to fall deeply asleep.

He wakes approximately an hour later to Niall’s face peering into his.

“Harry?” Niall says, with the tone of someone who’s had to repeat himself several times already. Harry blinks at him. He still feels groggy; he’s not sure the nap has actually done much good. He might even be more tired than he was when he’d fallen asleep.

“Hey, are you sure you want to come with me? You could wait at a café,” Niall suggests, but Harry shakes his head a bit impatiently.

“I’m really fine, don’t fuss. I’ll wake up once we’re off the train.”

Niall shrugs and leads them both off the train and into the chaotic morning rush of the station. Harry, still trying to shake the sleep from his mind, follows. It’s loud in the station, sounds bouncing through the open space and off the floor tiles, exacerbating the slight headache Harry’d woken up with. He grits his teeth and trails after Niall, telling himself firmly that he just needs some fresh air.

It’s only one stop on the Tube to St John’s Wood, where Ramsay’s daughter still lives in his old home, but Harry finds himself wishing they’d just walked the distance instead. The abrupt stop-and-start of the train adds a new layer of nausea to his exhaustion headache; he wishes now he’d eaten something today aside from coffee. When they finally emerge from the Tube station, it feels like he’s taking his first deep breath after being underwater.

Niall maps Ramsay’s address on his phone, and Harry follows his lead quietly. He wonders if Julia Ramsay will offer them snacks when they arrive. Based on her general attitude toward Niall thus far, he rather doubts it, but he feels it’s important to have hope.

By the time they’re walking through the tidy black gate and climbing the handful of stairs to Julia Ramsay’s front door, Harry’s dream of asking politely for a snack has evolved into a more elaborate fantasy that involves sneaking into her kitchen and raiding her cupboards, whether she invites him to or not. He stares dizzily at the gleaming black door while they both wait for Ms. Ramsay to answer her bell. The paint is glossy enough to reflect the sunlight, glinting in odd patterns that Harry can’t quite make out. He leans closer, squinting, and Niall has just said “Haz?” with rather unnecessary amounts of alarm, Harry thinks, when the door swings open and he nearly tips through the doorway.

“You must be Mr. Horan,” announces a small, pinched-looking woman, who regards them both with some distaste. “And your friend?”

“This is my colleague, Harry Styles,” Niall says, and Harry manages what he hopes is a winning smile, but is probably more like a grimace. Julia Ramsay grimaces back.

As long as they both understand each other, he supposes.

“Well, you’d better come in,” she tells them ungenerously, as though she hadn’t been the one to agree to see them in the first place.

Harry follows Ms. Ramsay and Niall through a narrow, dusty entryway and into an even dustier sitting room. Despite its large windows, everything in the room has a faded look to it, as though the sun hasn’t touched it in some time. The room is filled with an unlikely combination of old books and a collection of macramé owls in a dizzying array of sizes and colors.

Julia Ramsay settles both Harry and Niall on a lime green sofa and brings out a teapot and a plate of biscuits. Harry promptly puts two biscuits into his mouth at once. Niall gives him an incredulous look, and Harry does his best to chew quietly.

“Ms. Ramsay—” Niall begins, but Julia immediately interrupts him.

“I’ll tell you exactly what I told Arthur Addison months ago: stay away from my father’s journals. He didn’t listen, the stupid man, but maybe you’ll be wiser.”

“I’m sorry, but _why_?”

“I informed him that the journals were cursed, but he insisted on taking them. And now he’s dead.” Julia shrugs, a “what can you do?” gesture that seems incongruous with her doom-laden words.

Niall frowns and opens his mouth, and Harry fully expects him to say something skeptical (and probably borderline rude) about how curses are only a superstition. But to Harry’s surprise, instead Niall just says: “ _Why_ do you think your father’s journals are cursed? What was in them?”

Julia Ramsay gives Niall a sharp look and takes a small, dainty sip of her tea before answering.

“My father was a brilliant man, but the things he experienced in the Second World War…they changed him. My mother died in the London bombings soon after I was born, and I think he blamed himself, for not being there to protect her. He’d been a Spiritualist before, but after the war, he took up with a different writing group, and became…obsessed. I don’t remember much – I was just a child – but he was fascinated with the American scientists who’d worked on the Manhattan Project. I remember him saying once that they had the right idea – to stop wars before they could start. And that if something could be done with science, magic could surely do it better. He wanted to expand the scope of magic, standardize it, weaponize it. He used to say that he wanted to transform what poetry was capable of. And then he died. As did everyone else in his writing circle.”

“How can you be sure it was because of whatever he was working on? It’s tragic, but it could have been a coincidence,” Niall interjects. Julia Ramsay gives him another tight, almost scornful smile.

“Because they didn’t just _die_. They…faded. Like the life was being pulled out of them, one after the other. With no medical explanation. My father called it a sacrifice. He wanted me to continue his work when he was gone, but I wanted nothing to do with it. I had no interest in pursuing what seemed to me like a death sentence.”

“But you still kept the journals? And gave them to Arthur Addison,” Harry can’t help but point out. Julia Ramsay scowls.

“It’s not my job to protect idiots from themselves,” she snaps at Harry. Then she blinks and peers at his face with sudden interest. Harry shifts under her narrow gaze, wishing he hadn’t eaten quite so many of her biscuits.

“You didn’t tell me you’d already been using the journals,” Julia changes tacks abruptly.

“We…haven’t been. Like I told you before, we think they were all destroyed in the fire that killed Addison,” Niall explains, but there’s something guarded in his tone, as though he’s not being entirely truthful.

Julia laughs, and shakes her head.

“Not if this one’s any indication.” She gestures toward Harry, and Niall turns to stare at him as well.

“I don’t—” Harry shakes his head. He wishes he didn’t still feel so fuzzy from his nap earlier. He’s trying to understand what Julia is implying, but it feels like he’s pushing through cotton wool.

“I told you what happened to my father and his friends. The way they faded? Like you’re doing now.”

“What? No, I just didn’t sleep well.”

Julia Ramsay is visibly unimpressed with this explanation.

“It’ll only get worse, the longer it goes on,” she advises, like he hadn’t spoken at all. “You really should have taken my advice about the journals.” She takes another tiny sip of her tea and raises her eyes to the ceiling, as though silently bemoaning the stupidity of everyone around her.

“But I told you, we’ve never even _seen_ your father’s journals,” Niall insists. “How can Harry be affected by them?”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you,” Julia Ramsay says firmly. “If you’re quite done with your tea, I think you should go now.”

Defeated and quiet, Harry and Niall depart Julia Ramsay’s row house. But Harry only gets a few paces from her front gate before he loses his balance and stumbles. Niall just manages to catch him before he falls on the pavement, and guides him slowly to sit on the curb with his head between his legs. Harry pants and tries to shake off the sudden dizziness that’s assaulted him, while Niall sits quietly beside him.

“Well, this trip was rather rubbish,” Harry mumbles into his knees. “Sorry we wasted our time.”

“Hm? No, actually, I think it explained a lot.” And then, as though reinvigorated by that realization, Niall jumps to his feet. “We need to get back to Oxford. I’m hailing us a cab. Please don’t die before we get home.”

“I’ll try not to,” Harry grumbles. “Might be easier if _you_ explained…”

But Niall is too busy flagging down the promised cab to answer him. He’s just as tight-lipped as they catch the next train back to Oxford, and without anything to distract him, Harry finds himself falling asleep again.

For the second time that day, he wakes up to Niall’s voice, but this time, it’s clearly not directed at him. It sounds instead like Niall is finishing a phone call, and indeed, when Harry manages to blink his eyes open, he sees Niall staring down at the cell phone in his hands with a frown on his face.

“That was the Oxford police,” Niall says. Harry disguises his own surprise that Niall is finally _telling him something_ with a yawn.

“What’d they want?” he mumbles.

“Apparently, they’ve found evidence that Addison had been back and forth between London and Oxford several times over the past few months, and they wanted to me to confirm that I’d never met with him on any of those days.”

The longer Niall talks, the more excited he seems to become. His eyes glint with something like triumph, and his face is slightly flushed when he turns in his seat to grin at Harry.

“So?”

“ _So_ , didn’t you hear Julia Ramsay, before? She said she’d warned Addison about the journals _months_ ago. When he contacted me, he gave me the impression I was the first person he’d asked about Ramsay’s journals, but I think that was a lie. I think Addison had them long before he emailed me. I think he was consulting with someone in Oxford about them, and whoever _that_ person was, they’re the ones who killed him.”

Harry shakes his head, feeling very stupid, but unable to understand what Niall is so excited about.

“I dunno, Ni. I don’t see how that tells us anything we didn’t know before.”

“Because,” Niall explains, bouncing impatiently in his seat and gesturing with his hands. “It suggests that Addison _knew_ he was in danger that day he came into the Grimoire. Think about it: he’d been working with someone for months, and then he contacts me to set up an _urgent meeting_? He knew something,” Niall repeats. He leans back into his seat with the air of someone who’s just presented an irrefutable argument. “I think the key to understanding why Addison died, and maybe also the key to understanding what’s happening between you and Louis, is buried in that encoded note he left for me. We _have_ to decipher it.”

“I already know what’s happened between me and Louis!” Harry insists hotly, _hating_ that Niall can’t just accept the truth when Harry himself is so certain. “It was my fault! So I don’t see what _any_ of it has to do with some dead poet’s journals!”

“Just, help me figure out the note, Harry, and then I promise I’ll explain. I don’t mean to be cryptic, but remember what I told you Addison said, the first time he contacted me? That whatever was in Ramsay’s journals could revolutionize the practice of magic? Well, I’m deathly worried he was actually _right_. And before I say _anything_ , I want to be absolutely sure.”

Harry doesn’t know why Niall thinks they’ll have any more luck with Addison’s code now, when they’ve spent ages on it already without making any real progress toward understanding it. But once their train stops in Oxford, Harry finds Niall’s enthusiasm buoying him along anyway. Before he knows it, they’re back at the Grimoire with the familiar numbers of Addison’s note in front of them once more:

132-9-2

218-41-13

233-1-2

67-24-13

51-13-5

They don’t make any more sense now than they did the thousand other times Harry’s looked at them, and Harry is just opening his mouth to tell Niall he’s going home, when there’s a sudden pounding on the glass of the Grimoire’s door. Harry turns to see Liam grinning and waving from the pavement. And…of course, there’s Louis as well, hovering behind Liam and looking like he’s rapidly calculating possible routes of escape. Niall, of course, immediately bounces up and unlocks the door for both of them.

“Hey lads – is that a _dog_?” It is, indeed, Legolas, straining against his lead and toward Niall. He lets out a delighted bark of greeting, and Niall obligingly crouches down to pet him.

“Hello, Legolas,” Harry greets him gravely, and Legolas wriggles over to sniff at his hand. Playing with the dog also gives Harry an excuse for avoiding Louis’ eyes, although Harry can’t help but glance over at him when he thinks Louis isn’t looking. He’s wearing his familiar battered leather jacket, but he looks a bit subdued, holding himself stiffly outside of the triangle that Liam, Niall, and Harry have formed around the dog.

“We were just walking Legolas and saw the lights on in the Grimoire. Aren’t you usually closed on Sundays?” Liam asks, deliberately casual, and Harry knows with rock-solid certainty that Liam had been the one to drag Louis over to the Grimoire, probably against Louis’ own objections. Harry can’t blame Louis at all for being reluctant to approach Harry, after Harry has essentially fled from him every time they’ve seen each other for the past week. But even knowing all that, and knowing all the reasons Harry himself should be trying to encourage Liam and Louis away from the Grimoire, Harry finds that just seeing Louis’ face now – slightly pale and with his mouth turned unhappily down at the corners – can still make Harry feel like a weight against his lungs has been suddenly lifted.

He takes a deep breath, and smiles.

“We’re working on an independent project,” Niall answers Liam’s question a bit stiffly. Liam glances down at the pages of rejected solutions that are strewn around them.

“Oh, wow, is that a book code?”

Harry and Niall both turn to stare at him, and Liam falters under the sudden attention.

“I mean, it just…that’s what it looks like?” Liam offers, shrinking a little into himself. “And y’know, it’s a bookshop…” He gestures around, as though they might really have forgotten where they’re currently standing.

There’s another beat of silence, and then Niall lunges forward in a flurry of motion to capture Liam by the arm and tug him closer to their workspace.

“Can you decode it?”

“Oh, er…dunno? The numbers all correspond to a book, right? Like, first one’s the page, second one’s usually the line number, counting down from the top, and the third one, you count the words from left to right, until you get to the right one. Anyone who has the right book can decode it.”

“But we don’t know the book. Addison could’ve picked anything,” Harry says, wilting in disappointment after that initial burst of excitement.

“Addison?” Liam recognizes the name. “Like, the dead bloke? The one you cast the Protection Spell against?”

“Well, it wasn’t against _him_ , since he was already _dead—_ ” Niall starts, and Harry interjects hastily with: “It’s a long story.” Liam nods like he somehow finds that explanation satisfying.

“Okay,” Niall says, focusing back on the issue at hand. “If we assume Addison started writing this note when it seemed like nobody was in the shop, it would have to be—” he starts ticking things off on his hands, “—a book he was familiar with, something he could get his hands on quickly, and something he’d assume I could figure out without much prompting.”

“Yeah, but what did he even _know_ about you? You were strangers. How could he believe you’d _ever_ figure this out?”

“Maybe it was, like, a last resort?” Niall shrugs. “Maybe he thought he’d be around longer to explain. I dunno.”

“But there are so many books here. Without any other clues, it’ll take us forever to find the right one!”

“Well, here’s a place to start,” Louis interjects suddenly, speaking for the first time since he and Liam entered the Grimoire. He’s been lingering by the cashier’s desk at a bit of a distance from the conversation, but now, when Liam, Harry, and Niall turn to stare at him in surprise, he holds up one of the books he’s been browsing through, to reveal the familiar cover of _A Guide to Magical Practice_. “This is a big Spiritualist textbook, right?”

“Yeah…” Niall agrees slowly.

“But how did _you_ know that?” Harry blurts out. Louis glances over at him, and then quickly away again, and Harry remembers suddenly that he’d seen this book in Louis’ office before.

“You said it had to be a book you’d know,” Louis says, which hadn’t answered Harry’s question at all. “And it seems like the main thing Addison knew about you was that you were an expert in Spirtualism. So…” He shrugs, looking uncomfortable.

“No, that…actually makes sense,” Niall says, frowning thoughtfully. “Should we try the code, then?”

“Now? You don’t mind us seeing?” Liam asks, but he’s doing a terrible job of disguising his own hopeful curiosity. He stares avidly at the book in Louis’ hands before shifting his attention deliberately away, as though he’s trying to remind himself not to get too invested.

“Course,” Niall tells him stoutly. “Without you both, we never would’ve figured it out, right?”

“Harry? You don’t mind?” Louis says, turning a searching look on Harry.

Harry knows what he _should_ say, but what comes out instead is: “No.” He swallows around a throat that’s gone dry. “I don’t mind.”

Louis still seems to be hesitating, but now that Harry’s decided, however tentatively, to let Louis in, he finds he couldn’t bear it if Louis left anyway.

“Stay. Please,” he blurts out, and Louis blinks at the urgency of Harry’s tone, but seems to settle after that. He passes his copy of the _Guide_ to Niall with a small smile.

“Okay, so if we start with Page 132…” Niall mumbles to himself as he counts off lines and words, flipping through the book’s pages until he’s transcribed the full, five-word message.

“Danger. Find Tennyson. Book save,” Niall reads his own handwriting aloud.

“What does that last bit mean?” Liam asks, sounding disappointed by the anticlimactic nature of the message. “Did Addison mean that you should keep a book safe, and he just ran out of time to find the proper conjugation in the _Guide_?”

“Or maybe he meant that a book can save something?” Louis suggests.

“But we don’t _have_ a book—” Niall says. “Does he mean the _Guide_ itself?”

“And Tennyson? Who’s Tennyson?” Liam asks.

“Like the poet?” Louis asks, tilting his head.

“Or you…” Harry says slowly, remembering what Niall had suspected, that this message from Arthur Addison would end up relating to Louis in some way. “Alfred Lord, yeah?”

“Then why not say “Alfred Lord?” the words are right there next to the word “Tennyson,” he could’ve easily included them,” Louis points out reasonably. “Or just “Louis.” There’s a section on the poet Louis MacNeice, like, a hundred pages later. Honestly, I don’t think much of this bloke’s ability to craft a message. Danger? Thanks mate, that’s _real_ helpful…”

“Wait—” Niall says suddenly, darting off into the Grimoire’s stacks before they can ask him to explain. He returns almost immediately with a slim but battered book that Harry doesn’t recognize.

“This was on the Tennyson shelf. I think Addison hid it here. This might even be what someone broke in to find, but it was hidden amongst our inventory, in plain sight. ‘Find Tennyson,’ like: ‘Find this, in the Tennyson section.’”

“What is it, though?”

Niall flips it open to reveal pages of handwritten notes and diagrams.

“Paul Ramsay’s journals. Or all that’s left of them. Maybe now we have this, we can finally get some answers.”

Niall glances down at the book, frowns, and makes a jerky “one moment” gesture with one hand before dashing off to the back of the Grimoire with no more explanation than that. Harry, Louis, and Liam are left to stare awkwardly at each other in silence. From the expressions on both their faces, Liam and Louis seem to be casting about for some excuse to linger, now that they’ve solved the puzzle of Addison’s code. Louis in particular looks to be steeling himself to say something, but he finally just asks: “You’ll let us know, if Niall finds anything interesting?”

“Yeah, we’re in this now,” Liam interjects stoutly, and Harry wonders if he’s imagining the double meaning there: curiosity about the mystery of Ramsay’s journal, sure, but also possibly a warning to Harry about how he’s been treating Louis. But something in Harry feels like it’s snapped in the last hour, like spending this much time with Louis has drained him of his last defenses, and he knows he can’t bear to keep pushing Louis away.

_And maybe_ , a faint voice in the back of his mind suggests, even while Harry tries to quash the hope— _maybe, Niall has been right all along. Maybe it hadn’t been the Finding Spell that was responsible for whatever was happening to Louis. Maybe Ramsay’s journal would hold answers to more than just Addison’s death_.

“Yeah, I’ll let you know,” Harry finally answers, and even attempts a weary smile.

“Well, alright. In that case, we should probably get Legolas home.”

Legolas, who has been napping under the Grimoire’s front desk since his arrival, pokes his head out upon hearing his name, and offers a short bark to convey that they have his attention.

“Yes, you’ve been very patient,” Liam coos, collecting Legolas’ lead and guiding him toward the exit. Louis lingers for another beat, studying Harry, before reluctantly turning to follow.

Liam and Louis both step out onto the pavement. And immediately, several things happen in short succession.

First, Harry hears the familiar sound of the Grimoire’s door swinging shut.

Second, his head swims alarmingly, and the light in the bookshop dims.

Third, Niall appears, waving the journal, and calling out something in an excited tone, which Harry can’t parse through the sudden ringing in his ears. Harry hears him shout what sounds like “Wait! Don’t!” and there’s a vibration like pounding feet, before Harry blacks out entirely.


	4. Chapter 4

_And down the river's dim expanse_  
_Like some bold seër in a trance,_  
_Seeing all his own mischance—_  
_With a glassy countenance_  
_Did she look to Camelot._  
_And at the closing of the day_  
_She loosed the chain, and down she lay;_  
_The broad stream bore her far away,  
_ _The Lady of Shalott._

When Harry wakes up, the first thing he sees is Niall’s, Louis’ and Liam’s faces swimming above him. He blinks, trying to place where and when he is. It takes him a few long moments to realize that he’s lying on the squashy sofa in the stockroom of the Grimoire.

“I _told_ you to wait,” is the first thing Niall says, the tremor in his voice smoothing out any sharpness in his words. He pats at Harry’s curls clumsily before stomping off in the direction of the tea kettle. Harry struggles to sort through his his memories of what’d been happening before he fainted. He doesn’t remember Niall telling him to wait for anything…Well, before Niall had left with Paul Ramsay’s journal in hand, he _had_ gestured like maybe he was intending to come back soon, but Harry still thinks it’s rather unfair to expect them to have inferred anything else.

“Alright?” is what Louis leads with, much more gratifyingly. He looks pale and tense, but he gives Harry a genuine smile and puts a helping arm around his back when Harry tries to sit up on the sofa.

“Think so,” Harry reassures him, offering a small smile of his own.

“Glad you’re back, mate,” Liam adds, taking his own perch on the arm of the sofa.

“Look, Harry, maybe it’s not my business, but—” Louis cuts himself off, blinking rapidly, when Harry just starts to laugh. When Harry doesn’t show any signs of slowing down, Louis glances up at Niall for clarification. Niall gives the ancient electric teakettle a good thump to start it boiling, and shrugs.

“You couldn’t know it, but that _was_ quite funny,” he says, almost apologetically.

“Care to explain why?”

“You’re _really_ not gonna like it,” Harry assures him.

Louis narrows his eyes. “Try me.”

Niall offers around a selection of chipped tea mugs before flopping down on the sofa next to Harry. He glances up at Louis, who’s hovering near Harry without sitting down.

“It’ll probably be better if you’re touching.” Niall nods to the free spot on the other side of Harry on the sofa. Louis frowns but obliges him by sitting where he’s told. Their arms and legs brush, and Harry hadn’t noticed the pressure against his temples until it’s suddenly gone.

“Why is it better if we’re touching?” Louis asks sharply, eyes intent Harry’s face.

There’s a long silence, and finally Niall huffs.

“God, I can’t believe I’m actually saying this. But Harry’s been cursed.”

Several things happen at once. Louis says “ _What_?” Harry says “wait, _no_ ,” and jabs a betrayed elbow into Niall’s side. And Liam falls off the sofa.

“ _Cool_ ,” he breathes from his sprawl on the floor.

“I don’t know much about it,” Niall continues doggedly. “Except that it’s tied to you, Louis.”

“That’s ridiculous—”

“He fainted the minute you left the shop, and woke up soon after you came back. And it’s helped, having you next to him. Hasn’t it, Harry?”

“Well…” Harry starts. It _is_ true, but he feels almost embarrassed to reveal the extent to which Louis’ presence affects him. Harry’s hesitance clearly hasn’t fooled anyone, because Louis heaves a large sigh.

“I think maybe you should start at the beginning,” he says.

“Okay, so Harry first noticed something was wrong after the night that Oxford flooded,” Niall starts.

“‘Noticed something wrong’ is a bit of an understatement, don’t you think?” Louis mumbles, and then flushes when he realizes they’d all heard him. “Sorry.”

But Harry winces, hating the bewildered unhappiness that he can hear in Louis’ tone, and hating even more that he’d been the one to put it there. “No, you’re right. But once you hear this, things’ll make more sense. Maybe you’ll even forgive me.” Harry privately doubts it, but at least it’ll all be out in the open now. Louis will know the truth.

Harry takes over the story again, and Louis listens quietly as he repeats the list of romantic books, movies, and tropes that had dogged their relationship since its beginning.

“You even said it yourself, Lou – the flood felt like we were reenacting _Titanic_. ‘Bit ‘never let me go, Jack,’’ you said. Remember?” Harry finally concludes. Louis shakes his head.

“That was a _joke_.” He sounds bewildered and a little lost. But then Niall takes up the thread of the story.

“Harry assumed all these coincidences were something _he’d_ caused magically, but from the beginning I had my doubts. Something Harry said at the end of our conversation – that he’d felt anxious and jittery the minute he’d left you – made it sound like _Harry_ was the one under a spell. Those sounded like classic physiological symptoms of magic to me. And at first, I’d thought maybe Harry had miscast a spell on himself, something that physically encouraged him to be in the same location as Louis.”

“The Finding Spell,” Harry realizes with a start. Why hadn’t it ever occurred to him that the Finding Spell might be affecting _him_? It made far more sense than the alternative, once Harry thought about it logically.

“But the more I went back and looked at that spell, and the more research I did, the less likely that seemed,” Niall continues, almost apologetically. “The best conclusion Remy and I could draw was that someone _else_ had cast a spell on Harry. But that was just as impossible as Harry casting a spell on _Louis_ from a distance. Either way, someone had broken a Fundamental Law of Magic.”

“Magic can’t work on a person without their consent,” Liam recites, and Niall nods.

“Right. That’s when I remembered some rumors I’d come across in my research on Paul Ramsay. There were whispers that _he’d_ been working on a way to break the First Fundamental Law. A way to weaponize magic, his daughter told us. And the more I learned about Arthur Addison’s time in Oxford, the more convinced I became that Ramsay had succeeded, that he’d written the secret down in his journals, and that Addison had brought that secret to someone _else_ in Oxford first. Someone who might’ve cursed one of us, if it seemed like our Writer’s Circle was getting in their way. Or maybe they just wanted to…test the power of it. Make certain it would work. I’m not sure.”

“But who would do that?” Harry asks. Niall’s explanation makes logical sense, but it also seems inconceivable that anyone would want to _curse_ him. Harry’s head swims, and Louis puts a comforting hand on his arm.

“How do we make it stop?” Louis asks firmly.

“Apparently, Ramsay and his Writing Circle managed to bypass the First Fundamendal Law – the one about consent – by using the work of a dead poet. It’s tricky magic, and takes a _lot_ of power, and even Ramsay’s Writing Circle had failed when they tried it. Their spell still only affected them: the four of them were the only ones who died. But if someone _could_ get it to work, they could…detach the language of a spell from a particular individual and context, and apply it to anyone.”

“That still doesn’t explain what we’re going to _do_ about it,” Louis insists again.

“I don’t know exactly,” Niall admits, and Louis’ jaw clenches. Niall raises his hands placatingly. “We only got one journal, the one that catalogued the aftereffects, but I was able to determine what spell I think was cast on Harry. I think it was Tennyson. _The Lady of Shalott_.”

“Find Tennyson, like the note said,” Liam murmurs, and Niall nods.

“Addison may have known that his contact in Oxford was trying to curse one of us. Maybe he was even trying to warn us; maybe that’s why he was trying to get the journals to me in the first place.”

“So we know it’s _The Lady of Shalott_. What does that mean?” Louis asks, unwilling to be side-tracked. His hand clenches once on Harry’s arm before he forces it to relax.

And it’s not that Harry’s a massive fan of being cursed or anything, but when he compares this explanation to what he’d _thought_ happened, all he can feel is a desperate sense of relief. He hadn’t know how much tension he’d been carrying, how much _energy_ it had taken to be so worried for so long, until he’s finally allowed to let it go completely, and instead to lean fully into Louis by his side. Louis reaches around Harry’s shoulders instinctively, gathering him in and holding him close. Harry rests his head comfortably on Louis’ shoulder before focusing back on Niall’s explanations.

“Okay, so this is the story of the poem: basically there’s a lady who lives in a tower, creating art. Nobody can see her, and she can’t look out her own window, because she’s under a curse. She can only see the outside world through mirrors positioned by the window.”

“Oh,” Harry says quietly.

“Hazza—” Niall starts. Harry realizes suddenly that Niall’s had a book in his lap this whole time, because now he’s nudging it over to Harry. It’s already open to the proper page, and Harry skims through the text of the poem as quickly as he can.

“Okay, so it seems like the poem is split into four parts,” Harry narrates for the benefit of Louis and Liam. “The first part explains everything Niall just said: the Lady is stuck in her tower. In the second part, we see a lot of her weaving. She’s isolated and lonely, but she’s trying to build connections, even if she can’t interact with people for real. Just their reflections and shadows…oh, fuck. Whoever did this, they’re good. They knew just how to trap me. Here, listen to this bit:

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,  
An abbot on an ambling pad,  
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,  
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad,  
Goes by to tower'd Camelot;  
And sometimes thro' the mirror blue  
The knights come riding two and two:   
She hath no loyal knight and true,  
The Lady of Shalott.”

You saw it too?” Niall asks Harry, and he nods a confirmation. Louis and Liam still look baffled, and so he tries to explain: “It’s describing the people who appear regularly in the Lady’s life, right? Three people to start with: an abbot, a shepherd, and a page.”

Louis is the first to get it. “Remy, Niall, and Margaret.”

Niall nods. “I think someone was able to twist the meaning of the poem to apply to Harry’s life, and that’s how they could repurpose it as a curse. And Part Three is what jump-starts the curse on the Lady in the poem, so it’s also probably the start of the curse on you.”

“A knight appears,” Harry finishes for him. “Seen through the blue mirror.”

“Lancelot,” Niall agrees. “But to the Lady, he’s like…the sun. Shining in his armor. A “burning flame,” the poem says. He can’t see her either, but she falls in love with him anyway. And it’s enough to break the Lady out of her patterns. She leaves her tower, and her mirror cracks.”

“And then in Part Four…” Harry trails off, reading silently for a moment. “She gets into a boat and floats down the river toward Lancelot, but by the time her boat reaches Camelot, she’s died. And the only reaction from Lancelot is—”

“He says she has a lovely face,” Louis murmurs, distantly, like he’s recalling something he’d read long ago. “He only sees the superficial; he never realizes the depth of her love.” And then Louis suddenly goes ghost-pale, one hand clapped over his mouth, his eyes like hollows in his face.

“And Harry was cursed by _this_ poem? He was enchanted with unrequited love?” he blurts out, and jerks up off the sofa, backing away from Harry with something like horror.

“No!” Niall insists, looking equally aghast. “I’m sorry, I keep forgetting you’re new to Spiritualism. Ramsay and his Writing Circle may have managed to bypass one Fundamental Law, but _not_ the other. Remember, magic can’t make you feel emotions.”

“But that’s the whole point of _The Lady of Shalott_ , right? She falls in love. That’s why she dies,” Louis insists.

“Magic works a bit more abstractly than that,” Niall explains patiently. “Like I’ve said, the spell that was cast on Harry didn’t make him _think or feel_ anything about you. Erm, think of it less as a “love spell,” and more of a “proximity spell.” Harry felt physiological effects when you were separated from each other: adrenaline, dizziness, exhaustion. But as far as I can tell, when you’re around each other, the spell has no effect at all. The physical symptoms completely abate.”

“Niall’s right,” Harry chimes in quietly, and Louis’ head snaps up so quickly that Harry’s afraid he’ll hurt himself. “I’m not saying I haven’t…felt emotions or made choices based on what I thought my body was feeling. But you didn’t hurt me, and I didn’t hurt you. Everything I said and did with you, it was all _me_. Because I wanted to. I’ve been casting spells for a long time. I do know what they feel like, and you just…have to trust me.”

Harry thinks briefly of the irony of telling Louis to trust him when Niall, not so long ago, had urged Harry to trust _him_ on almost the exact same issue. He knows, therefore, exactly how hard it’ll probably be for Louis to do. How easy it is to fixate on your own culpability, however illusory, instead of focusing on what another person might need to heal.

He does hope that Louis will believe him, though.

“Lads, I think we’re ignoring another issue,” Liam interjects from the floor, apologetic at cutting Harry and Louis’ discussion short. “In this poem, the Lady _dies_ at the end. And if Harry’s meant to be this Lady…Can magic actually _kill_ someone?” He turns to Niall, clearly hoping Niall has some alternative explanation, but Niall just shakes his head, looking ill.

“It killed Paul Ramsay and his Writing Circle,” is all he says, and Harry sways with that realization, that he might actually _die_.

“You have to keep touching him,” Niall hisses urgently to Louis, and Louis practically falls over himself to tumble back onto the sofa and pull Harry close again, like someone might burst into the storeroom at any moment to remove him from Louis’ arms. “I told you, for as long as you’re touching, it short-circuits the effects of the magic.”

“Sorry, but this is mad,” Louis says, voice shaking, but he doesn’t actually stop touching Harry, despite his professed skepticism. “I don’t know what I was even thinking, listening to this whole…Harry could be _really sick_ , and instead of seeing a doctor, we’re sat here, _reading poetry_ to each other…”

“We could talk to Elaine,” Niall interrupts. “She knows something about all this, I’m sure of it, and once she learns that Harry’s ill— Come with us, Lou. Trust us on the magic, just for tonight. And if nothing comes of it, I’ll take Hazza to the doctor myself. Alright?”

“If you’re wrong,” Louis says quietly, and Harry feels a bright flash of triumph at that _if_. “If you’re wrong, you could be letting something serious go untreated. You could be genuinely, _medically_ sick right now. You realize that, yeah?” He touches the back of Harry’s hand, and Harry glances up again to find his brilliant blue eyes regarding Harry steadily. Harry gives him a tremulous smile as he flips his own palm, to tangle their fingers together. The corners of Louis’ lips quirk up. He gives Harry’s hand a light squeeze.

“Okay. Let’s talk to Elaine.”

***

Niall gets in contact with Elaine, and reports back that she’s agreed to meet them on a footpath, called Addison’s Walk, that circles a small island near Magdalen College. Harry wonders if she chose it deliberately as a reference to Arthur Addison, or whether it’s all just another coincidence.

When the four of them arrive at the appointed spot on the path – Louis making sure to keep at least one of Harry’s hands firmly clasped in one of his at all times – Elaine’s eyebrows fly up at the sight of them.

“Didn’t think either of you’d ever leave Remy and Mags behind for a new Writer’s Circle. Especially one with…sorry, who’re you?” She eyes Liam skeptically.

“They’re more of a Writer’s Circle Annex,” Niall explains stoutly, and Elaine’s expression goes tight.

“God, the two of you,” she laughs, and Harry’s shocked by the unkindness of the sound. “With your childish friendships and petty spells. I couldn’t _wait_ to be rid of the lot of you, did you know that? Of course you didn’t. Neither of you could conceive of anyone not wanting to be your _friend._ Even _him—_ ” She makes a sharp, cruel gesture toward Louis, who tightens his grip on Harry’s hand. Her eyes dart toward their clasped hands, and then settle there like she’s transfixed. “Biggest Classical poet in the country, and somehow you managed to seduce _him_. It shouldn’t have been _possible_ —”

“Elaine,” Niall interrupts quietly, voice perfectly even, and that’s how Harry knows he must be truly furious. “What did you do?”

She can’t stop staring at Harry and Louis’ hands, hypnotized, and seems to become even more careless with her words as a result.

“It was supposed to be the perfect solution. The variable that Paul Ramsay’d missed.”

Harry feels like all the air has been punched out of him. _Elaine_ had been the one to curse him? He can hear Louis draw in a sharp breath next to him, and Niall’s fists are clenched tight, but nobody seems to want to risk saying anything to interrupt Elaine’s explanation.

“For the spell to take hold, it had to be _just right_. Even though I hadn’t been part of your Writing Circle for long, I knew _you_. Niall and Remy might have been too skeptical, too practical, to be good test subjects, but _you_ , Harry. _You’d_ believe anything, as long as it was wrapped up in one of your cute little stories. If we offered you a script to follow, I knew you’d jump at the chance to recite your lines. You’d happily pine for someone who didn’t even know you existed, right up until you died of it, and you’d go to your grave still believing it to be the grandest heights of _romance_.”

“I—” Harry casts about for a defence against Elaine’s accusations, but he can’t think of one. Everything she’s saying about him is probably true.

“My Circle decided you’d make the perfect test of Ramsay’s theory. Even that coward Addison agreed to it, because it was the only way to verify that the journals were real. He didn’t even care that if this worked, we’d be pushing the boundaries of Magical Law beyond what anyone had ever thought possible!”

Elaine laughs and shakes her head, eyes still on Harry and Louis’ hands. “We came up with the perfect person, too, the one person who would never love odd, romantic, Spiritualist Harry Styles back. Lewis Tomlinson,” she sneers, pronouncing Louis’ name with the “s” at the end, as the general public does. “So of _course_ , you had to go and _ruin_ it somehow. How did you do it? That curse was supposed to be _unbreakable_. You were supposed to be _dead_ by now!”

And with a snarl of rage, Elaine suddenly lunges for Harry and Louis, aiming for their clasped hands as though she intends to tear them away from each other by force. Before she can reach them, Louis has hauled Harry back, practically dragging him to a safe distance, while Niall and Liam leap to restrain Elaine.

“I can’t believe you did this.” Harry feels the tears spring unbidden into his eyes. “You said you were my friend,” he pleads, feeling dizzily like this could all still be some sort of a mistake. And then he remembers: “You saw me out with Louis, and so you called me up to try to convince me to stay away from him. And it _worked_. I blamed _myself_ , for…liking Louis more than he liked me.”

“Harry,” Louis says beside him in a low voice, and turns Harry until they’re both facing each other. Louis grabs his other hand, something like desperation in the way he’s clinging to it, in the agonized light in his sea blue eyes. “ _Please_ tell me you don’t believe that. _I’m_ the one who liked you – too much, probably. And this, none of this—” He gestures with their clasped hands, a wide circle that encompasses Elaine, struggling against Liam and Niall’s hold, and Harry expects him to say _none of this is real anyway_ , but what he says instead is: “—matters. None of it matters, because we’re going to fix it. Okay? _Nothing’s_ going to happen to you.”

“Oh, this might actually be _better_ than if the spell had worked like it was meant to,” Elaine smirks cruelly. “Louis Tomlinson, famous Classicist, is willing to sacrifice his principles and use magic when it’s to save his _boyfriend_. Wonder what he’ll do when you die anyway.”

“Shut up,” Niall bites out. “Harry, Louis, you shouldn’t have to listen to any more of this. We’ll meet you back at the Grimoire, yeah?”

Harry can hear Elaine’s laughter the entire tiem it takes to get off the island, echoing from the path behind him.

***

Harry and Louis walk in silence back to the Grimoire; Louis’ constant, tight hold on Harry’s hand the only sign that he’s still there. Harry’s thoughts are whirling with everything they’ve learned in the last few hours. He keeps trying to make sense of it all, but it still feels more like something out of a dream or a story, than real life. But he supposes that’s really been the problem, all along.

“So it really was my fault,” he finally says quietly, just before they reach the familiar sanctuary of the Grimoire. “Maybe not in the way I thought, but…I was so naïve. Niall was right, and I was looking for things that never existed. And now I’m going to—” Harry chokes on his words. It still doesn’t feel real. It can’t be real.

“You’re _not_ going to die,” Louis insists fiercely, whirling on Harry and forcing them both to come to a sudden halt in the center of the pavement. “And _none_ of this was your fault. Don’t let Elaine make you believe that. She _used_ you, and the stories you love, to make you think you were doing something wrong, when all you were doing was believing that love was something you deserved to feel. And you _do_ , Harry. You deserve _so much_.”

Harry shakes his head. His tears are falling freely now; he’s sobbing like an idiot on this public street, but he can’t seem to pull himself together.

Louis squeezes his hand, and Harry can barely see his expression through his own tears, but he can hear the note of urgency that’s in Louis’ voice when he continues: “You told me earlier to trust you, about the magic. Well, trust _me_ now, on this, if you can’t trust yourself: Elaine did this. All of it. Not you.”

Harry’s honestly not sure he _can_ , but Louis seems so desperate for him to agree that he finds himself nodding obediently.

“Okay,” Louis sighs, and tugs him gently into a slow walk. They’re quiet again as they walk, and as they wait in the bookshop for Niall and Liam to return, pressed together once again on the storeroom sofa.

Time stretches strangely, and Harry can’t say how much of it has passed by the time Niall and Liam arrive.

“Elaine?” Louis asks abruptly, the moment he sees them, and Niall offers him a weary shrug of his shoulders.

“I didn’t know exactly what to do; how was I meant to tell the police my friend had been cursed? But luckily, I thought to call Remy, because they were like ‘you knob, this means Elaine probably killed Arthur Addison, so tell them that,’” he repeats, in his usual spot-on mimicry of Remy’s exasperated tone. “And that’s what we did. Remy’s following up at the station now.”

“So how do we break a curse?” Louis asks, jiggling his knee rapidly up and down, even as his arm around Harry stays gentle. “Obviously, Elaine was lying about it being impossible. Just another way to wind us up. Right?”

Niall opens his mouth, but then hesistates on the answer.

“Oh come _on_ , you can’t be serious!”

“You can’t really…break spells,” Niall finally says, shooting an anguished look at Harry. “You can interfere with them, sometimes, but—”

“Then fuckin’… _interfere_ ,” Louis bursts out. He runs shaky fingers through his hair.

“S’not that simple, Lou,” Harry interjects quietly, reaching out to still Louis’ jumpy knee.

“Anyway,” Niall adds. “I think we already _have_ interfered. Your Finding Spell, Harry, the one that you wrote, that would’ve temporarily linked you magically to Louis? I think it _did_ work. I’ve been wondering why the _Lady of Shalott_ curse goes dormant when you two are near each other, or touching directly, and I think maybe it was your Finding Spell. I think it…redirected the curse a bit, or _confused_ it, for lack of a better word. Elaine was right. You two were never meant to actually get to know each other for real, but you did. And the closer you became in real life, the more Harry’s Finding Spell was able to fight the effects of the curse.”

“So why isn’t it working any more?” Harry asks.

“Well,” Niall says apologetically. “You were apart for a long time. I think that broke the Finding Spell’s hold.”

“ _God—_ ” Harry thumps his head back against the sofa. Once again, it all comes back to _his_ decisions.

But Louis is suddenly leaning forward, entire body tensing with some strong emotion. When Harry glances over at his face, he’s shocked to realize it looks almost like _excitement._

“I think I know—” Louis stutters out. He whirls on Harry. “Will you be alright for a few moments, if I leave to get a book from the stacks?”

“I…think so?” Harry says, confused, but Louis just nods and darts away before any of them can ask anything else. He’s back almost immediately – before Harry feels more than a mild pressure against his temples and a slightly elevated heartrate – with a large book in hand.

“Where’d that come from?” Niall asks, instantly curious about any book he can’t identify from sight alone.

“It was something I remembered, from my own reading on Tennyson. _The Lady of Shalott_ had two versions. Tennyson wrote the first one in 1833, with twenty stanzas. And then he revised it in 1842, so that it only had nineteen.”

He flips to the proper page in the book he’s brought, and holds it out to them all triumphantly. But it’s clear Niall is just as baffled as Harry about why Louis would think this matters.

“I thought—” Louis rounds on Niall almost accusatorily. “In the _Guide to Magical Practice_ , it said that Spiritualist poetry was all about unity and completion. ‘Unity of purpose, unity of language, unity of form,’” he quotes. “That’s what it said in, like, the very first section of the book. But this curse, it can’t have had a complete form. Because the more recent version, the one that’s anthologized everywhere, the one Elaine’s group probably used to cast their spell…it’s missing a stanza.”

And now, finally Louis gets the reaction he’s been looking for. Niall actually leaps out of his seat and starts pacing around the room, waving his hands as he works it out. It exhausts Harry just to watch him.

“The curse was incomplete,” Niall echoes. “Had to’ve been. That must’ve been why Harry’s Finding Spell could intervene for so long. And that might leave us just enough of an opening…”

“To do what?”

“To finish the poem ourselves. Write a different ending. You’ll have to be the one to write it, Louis.”

“ _Me_?”

“Obviously,” Niall says impatiently. “You’re Lancelot. You’re the one who doomed the Lady – I mean, Harry – so you’re the one who has to save him. You need to change the ending. Do something _differently_ than what the Lancelot in the poem did.”

“I really don’t know—”

“You don’t have to _know_. You just have to _see_.”

“What the hell is the difference?”

“Erm, well, it’s like – knowing always has an opposite, doesn’t it? Not knowing. Being right always carries along the shadow of being wrong. But magic doesn’t work that way. It _is_. So seeing is…accepting, I suppose? Believing. Holding knowing and not knowing in balance with each other.”

“You mean, believing in magic?”

“No, you idiot. I mean believing in _Harry_.”

“How can I believe in Harry?” Louis shoots him an apologetic glance and lowers his voice. “He’s been under a curse the whole time I’ve known him. I’ve never known him _without_ the magical predisposition to--” Louis cuts himself off, flushing. “To like me. And Elaine said she picked me on purpose,” Louis continues, his voice starting to go higher and faster with distress. “Boy meets boy, Harry Styles sees Louis Tomlinson, and Louis doesn’t have the _capacity_ —” He cuts himself off with a gasp, eyes wide.

“No…” Louis corrects slowly. “She wouldn’t have said that. She would’ve said _Lewis_ Tomlinson. That’s what she called me. What everyone calls me.”

“Okay? I’m not sure that—”

“No, listen! The spell was never about me at all! It was about _Lewis_. The person she thought she could manipulate Harry into falling in love with, using a proximity spell, and who would never fall in love with Harry back. She said it herself. _Lewis_ Tomlinson, the most famous Classical poet in the country.” Louis laughs, bright and triumphant.

“Mate. Our whole plan kind of depends on the Lancelot of the spell being able to shift it, and now, what you’re saying is, Harry’s Lancelot doesn’t even _exist_? I’m not sure this is…the good news you think it is,” Niall says.

“It’s brilliant!” Louis assures him. “It’s like Harry’s Finding Spell.” Niall frowns, clearly still lost. “Elaine’s curse was trying to direct Harry to _Lewis_ , and Harry kept finding _me_ instead. I get it now, what you were trying to explain about knowing and not knowing. A spell can be like…recognizing two different versions of a person, at the same time.”

“Uhh, that’s not _exactly_ \--”

Don’t worry, Niall. I know what to do. Okay.” Louis nods once, sharply, expression settling into a focused calm now that he has a clear objective ahead of him. “I’ll need a pen and paper, and a copy of _The Lady of Shalott_. I think it’s time for Alfred Lord to surpass his namesake.”

***

It only takes Louis another hour – and frequent consultations with Harry and Niall about the minutia of magical poetry-writing – to have the stanza written.

Once it’s done, they all agree that the best place to actually cast the spell is back at Harry’s flat; none of them are sure what the effects of the spell will be, and they deem it better to work in a place with ready access to a bed and some food. Remy joins them there, after coming directly from the police station, where Elaine is still being held for questioning.

They decide that the four of them – Remy, Niall, Liam and Louis – will cast the spell on Harry, rather than risk complicating things further by asking Harry to participate in casting this particular spell on himself. At first, Liam refuses, anxious about screwing it up and insisting that there must be _someone_ better suited for it, but Remy and Niall both insist, Niall citing something mystical-sounding about “balance” that Harry’s almost entirely certain he’d made up on the spot.

Harry’s never been the subject of a spell without also helping to cast it, and it’s a weird feeling to be sat in the center of the circle, as the four of them looked down on him solemnly from their chairs.

They start the spell, and the first sign that it’s accomplishing anything at all, comes like the gentle lapping of waves against Harry’s feet. It’s soothing, the sound of the words, rocking him like a river, like floating –

Harry passes out just as the last words of the spell are spoken.

***

When Harry wakes up again, it’s to find himself alone in his bedroom. He sits up in bed, blinking. He feels _amazing_. It’s as if he’d been sleeping poorly for weeks and finally managed to rest properly. He knows instantly that the curse has been lifted. He can feel its absence in the sudden lightness of his limbs, the lack of any ache in his joints, the way his mind feels so clear. Even his senses feel sharper and more precise, like he’s no longer experiencing the world from behind a screen.

For example, although the flat is quiet around him, he can hear a slight rustling coming from somewhere outside his bedroom, and Harry promptly sets off to investigate.

He pads into the kitchen to find Niall peering into a cupboard.

“Rifling through my things while I’m unconscious?” Harry asks, and Niall jumps in surprise, hits his head against the cupboard, and curses. He whirls around, rubbing at his head.

“Harry? How do you feel?”

“Fine,” Harry replies. “Really _good_ , actually. I think Louis’ spell worked. Where is he, anyway? Did he have to go meet a student or something?” Harry tries to ask the question casually, as though he isn’t vaguely hurt by Louis’ absence. He reminds himself sternly that Louis has a job, and a life, and he may have saved _Harry’s_ life, but…no, nope, there’s no way Harry’s winning this particular argument against himself. He wants Louis here; he can’t pretend otherwise, even if it’s just to himself.

Niall shifts awkwardly, eyes flitting around the kitchen.

“You hungry?”

“Why are you changing the subject? What’s happened to Louis?” Immediately, a series of worst-case scenarios flash through Harry’s mind. Louis hadn’t done something stupid like sacrifice himself, or—

“Nothing! Honestly, he’s fine, it’s just…you _do_ want to see him?” Niall peers at him carefully.

“Of course,” Harry replies, disconcerted. “Doesn’t he want to see me? I thought…the spell wouldn’t have worked unless…” Harry trails off, but Niall doesn’t help him out, just waiting patiently with his head cocked for Harry to continue.

“He believes in me,” Harry finally blurts out, and then immediately winces at how plaintive it sounds. “He must. If the spell worked, it means he believes in me.”

“That’s true,” Niall answers, cocking his head like he’s considering his words. “And you still…feel the same way about him, as you did before?”

Harry blinks at him. “I thought you said…the Second Fundamental Law…”

“Well,” Niall shifts, embarrassed. “I was _pretty_ sure they hadn’t managed to fuck that one up too, but it still seemed important to _ask_.”

“Yes,” Harry answers definitively. “I feel exactly the same. I mean, my body feels more like _mine_ again, but everything I felt for Louis is still there.”

“Dunno whether _Louis_ knows that.” Niall wrinkles his nose, considering it. “He was here for ages, making sure you were alright, sighing over your bedside all lovelorn, but the moment you looked like you were gonna wake up?” He gestures toward Harry’s front door. “He was gone.”

“Okay.” Harry nods sharply. “Well luckily, I don’t need a spell to know exactly where to find him.”

***

Harry ambles toward Louis’ favorite writing spot along the river, where Louis is indeed sitting. He’s got a notebook in his lap, but it doesn’t look like he’s written anything in it recently. Instead, he’s just staring into the river, something defeated about the slump of his posture.

“Y’know it’s funny, there are a lot of rivers in George Eliot’s novels, too,” Harry calls out. Louis’ head shoots up at the sound of Harry’s voice, before he looks studiously back down at his notebook. “Could never really figure out why.”

“Heraclitus, I always thought.” Louis shrugs.

“Sorry?”

“You know, the Greek philosopher? He said that nobody ever steps in the same river twice, meaning everything’s always changing. But maybe floating along the current of a river feels like a way to prolong time. You haven’t stepped _out_ of the river yet, so in some way, you’re still in the same place.”

“Is that why you’re always writing near water?”

Louis gives a startled laugh, and finally looks up at Harry properly. “Dunno. Maybe.”

“You alright?”

Louis laughs again, but it’s a hollower sound than before. “I still can’t really believe any of it happened,” he confesses. “I mean, _The Lady of Shalott_ is just a bunch of words that some bloke thought up in the 1800s. It’s a story.”

“Well, yeah,” Harry retorts. “But the _story_ part is kind of inevitable, isn’t it? Everything is…always a story. That’s how magic works; it’s how _life_ works. It’s just that when I first met you, I think I was too caught up in the wrong ones. Other people’s.” Harry ducks his head down, somehow unable to meet Louis’ eyes for this next part. “It left me more vulnerable, I think, when someone wanted to use me to tell a story that would hurt people. I didn’t know how to recognize the curse and fight it off, because it was nothing I hadn’t already been doing to myself. I wanted a fairy tale, but I was letting other writers shape it for me. I was letting someone else put predefined limits on what I thought my fairy tale could look like.”

Harry tilts his head up to check on Louis’ reaction to all this. His mouth is still turned down into a frown, but his eyes are intent on Harry’s face, and there’s a softness to them that suggests he understands at least some bits of what Harry’s trying to say. Harry wonders which parts they are.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Louis says, sounding completely certain of it.

“I do know that.” Harry wrinkles his nose. “I think. Most of the time. But I can still think about the way I reacted, and how I want to react to things in the future. When I first called Niall, panicking about possibly ensorceling you, he said he thought I was really panicking because things were getting serious between us, and I wasn’t ready to handle it. And, like, we know now that magical stuff really _was_ happening to us, even if it wasn’t controlling either of us the way we thought, but I also think Niall was right. I should’ve noticed that _I_ was the one suffering from magical symptoms of a kind of proximity spell; it _didn’t_ make sense for me to jump to mind-control. But I was seeing references to my favorite stories everywhere, but suddenly they felt less _comforting_ and more _scary_ , because they didn’t match up to the _actual romantic things_ that were happening between us. And so, this is terrible, but on some level, I think I preferred to believe that all those tropes of the heterosexual romance plot were still structuring my life in some way – even if it meant they were doing something horrible to a person I cared about – rather than admit that none of it was really in my control at all. And I want to…be better about that. About believing in myself, and the people in front of me, rather than in fictional characters. Because I think—”

Harry flushes, ducking his head, because Louis has been watching him steadily, almost expressionlessly, all throughout his long, rambly, probably borderline-incoherent flood of thoughts, and really, Louis could interrupt _any time now_. But Louis doesn’t, and so Harry is forced to continue.

“I think, erm, the person in front of me right now? Might be really worth it.” He scrunches his eyes shut with a groan. “Oh God, that was really cheesy, wasn’t it? Just—pretend I didn’t say that, pretend I said something cooler—”

“Harry,” Louis finally says, bringing his panicked monologue to a crashing halt. He reluctantly eases one eye back open to find Louis smiling at him, small but so genuine it actually hurts to look at. “The person in front of me? Is worth that, too.”

Harry’s feels the wide smile break across his face, relieved and joyful and unable to be contained.

“So, what you’re saying is…” he offers, trying not to laugh. “It wasn’t over? It still isn’t over?”

Louis groans, but he’s grinning brightly. “It wasn’t over for me,” he confirms, picking up on _The Notebook_ quote seamlessly. “But I have to tell you, Harry, if I kiss you right now and it starts to rain on us? I think I’m gonna lose it.”

Harry shrugs. “Then we’d just be singin’ in the rain. And what a glorious feeling, I’m—oof!”

Harry laughs as Louis tackles him back onto the grass. He’s pretty sure that Louis is only kissing him to shut him up before he starts singing, but honestly? Harry is fine with that.


End file.
